Jon,
we’re moving away from the inductions for the tools in the wood shop past the basic to an assessment format that should be significantly easier to get through. This was announced in the members meeting, and I’ve been updating the relevant tool pages and waiting lists as that gets rolled out. Ideally the waiting list goes away, and we just need to see you use the tool and take an online quiz so we have that documented. We still need to do the basic, as that’s more of an orientation towards the wood shop. I’ll add a link to the bottom of my post. I see a router in your profile picture so I expect this will be pretty straightforward. We also have a new Fesstool router I expect you’ll be happy with.
The reason we do inductions/assessments is because we need to be able to screen/educate members on tools and enforce safe usage (the HSE rules essentially) for the tool, themselves, and other members in the space. We have hundreds of members with varying levels of experience, and without inductions, the wood shop would simply not be in a usable state.
We understand that the induction process for the woodshop is currently difficult with long wait times, which is why we’re in the process of making these changes.