Having been to these, here is my perspective. The organizers of this fair and the participants are looking for folks that can demonstrate unique products or processes. The crowd will want to see or participate in what we have to offer. Teaching basic woodworking skills, even with our mobility just is not that unique - but our ability to teach physically challenged is unique and if we could demonstrate that aspect we could draw some real interest and very possibly gain some new members that want to help us and also get some great leads on future students.
I do not see how we could have the general public doing any hands on as we would not have the time to properly train them on how to safely do this. In our normal training classes we review both general shop safety and machine specific safety and I that would be very hard to do at a fair.
If we were to have both a lathe and scroll saw setup and had NCWW demonstrators sitting in wheelchairs using only one arm, we would generate interest and if a wheelchair bound spectator ask to try we could then take the time to train them properly and let them try.
Both Bill and myself are somewhat overextended during May and June, if somebody would like to pull a team together I would be willing to get a couple of wheelchairs and help you plan this. Somebody on the team would need to go to Liberty and pick the trailer up.
I agree this would be great PR but we must do this carefully
phil
