This series of informational blog posts come from a document Mike,Caesandra and Kevin created to help orient new Buffalo ReUse board members to our mission,vision,values and the actual history of our organization. Earlier parts: One Two Three Four Five Six Seven Eight Nine

Buffalo Action for Revitalization

The BAR Program was initiated by Buffalo ReUSE to plug people into active citizenship–volunteerism–making a space for The City of Good Neighbors to be good neighbors. We created the BAR Program to improve quality of life in neighborhoods and literally build a thriving neighborhood, beginning with our target area–in the Masten and Cold Spring neighborhoods.  Our ReSource and office space literally straddle the adjoining borders of those neighborhoods. 

The BAR Program may seem like a strange interest for a demolition crew, but we are NOT a typical demolition company.  As a nonprofit organization and a green business we believe that investing in our neighborhood is paramount.  Every business in Buffalo from the smallest corner store to the largest corporation should make contributions of time, talent or funding to improve the city in which it operates and do so while respecting the environment and surrounding community.  Local businesses should emphasize and support sustainable communities through their own lifestyle; we are modeling the behavior we want to see in every local business.

The BAR Program has many components which are described below:

Blight Reduction

• Board Ups–to secure vacant properties against vandalism, arson, looting and squatting; we chose to use local public school art classes as the painters during our city-wide Neighborhood Peace Mural Project
• Street Blitzes–groups amass to clear debris from one end of the street to the other, mowing, pruning, edging, performing light-duty maintenance etc.
• Putting garbage cans and flower planters at the street corners
• Tree Plantings with RETREE WNY twice a year and maintaining the neighborhood’s arboreal inventory

Murals and Public Art

• Installing bike racks and bus stop benches/weather shields

Green Space Development

• Initiating Community Vegetable Gardens which contribute to access of fresh food and better nutrition in our low-income neighborhoods
• Creating Pocket Parks, safe pass-thrus of vacant lots and edible landscaping
• Securing Vacant Lots against illegal dumping
• Transforming Vacant Lots into aesthetic, useful and educational spaces
• Emphasizing best practices for indigenous plantings, rain gardens, compost, sustainable improvements

Supporting Home Ownership

• Building a space where the neighborhood can meet, organize and learn (158 Eaton St)
  Operating a tool lending library for garden, shop, power and hand tools so that groups can organize their own “action events” We’ve named our tool library, the TOOL BARn to further brand the BAR Program
• Maintain a yearly calendar of workshops which teach folks aspects of gardening, tool usage, and home improvement
  Provide access and information about the responsibility and process of becoming a home owner including: loans, grants, coaching, IN-REM, housing code violations, avoiding foreclosure etc

Community Building

• Coordinate events that bring together folks from our neighborhood and other parts of the City–like volunteer workdays, Open Houses at the ReSource, farm stands and
• Celebrate accomplishments of the BAR program and neighborhood–such as harvest potlucks, screenings of documentary films and farm stands
• Create a space where block clubs, women’s groups, neighbors and supporters can congregate to organize their own meetings, trainings or events
• Assess needs and concerns of the neighborhood and ways to meet those needs; safety (of persons, property, and the streets) is always the biggest concern

Brief History

Conceptually, the BAR Program began simultaneously with Buffalo ReUse and our core values of community, jobs and resources.  To that end, our first “action event” was painting mermaids and flowers on 4′x8′ plywood boards in Summer of 2007–used to secure the vacant Queen City Farm property at 194 E. Utica, which QCF designated for their urban farm community.  We had a potluck in Michael’s backyard and the boards were painted by the core group of founders, board members, volunteers, urban activists and newly hired staff; the was an event open to anyone.  At summer’s end, Buffalo ReUse scheduled the board up and another group of volunteers and founding members scrambled all over the QCF house securing openings and painting more boards on site.  By midday all the windows and doorways were shut for the upcoming winter season. 

Later that afternoon the group transferred the tools to the site of 50 Women with a Vision’s corner lot at Jefferson and Woodlawn.  Together, both groups cleared debris from the lot and erected the sign detailing the layout of their proposed Cultural Art Park.  Buffalo ReUse has always made efforts to connect and collaborate with other like-minded grassroots organizations and service agencies because collaboration of shared goals is what builds a community.

In the summer of 2008, we became a job site for The Mayor’s Summer Employment Program for six weeks. We named our participants The Green Summer Crew and charged our working teens to Green Our Neighborhoods. Eighteen teens and six Green Space Coordinators led the effort to begin transforming Eaton and Northampton Streets by building community gardens, performing street blitzes and initiate the rehab of 158 Eaton St.

Subsequent BAR Program action events have included the planting of over 400 trees in the Masten and Cold Spring neighborhoods. We have also boarded up 4 vacant houses near schools and another 7 houses on the West Side slated for rehab (in collaboration with PUSH).  We registered with City Hall and participated in The Great American Clean Up, collecting debris throughout the 5 streets surrounding the ReSource.  In 2008, we wrote a collaborative grant with Grassroots Gardens and were awarded funds by The Community Foundation of Greater Buffalo to jointly transform 20 vacant spaces on the East and West sides and establish a Tool Lending Library in Buffalo.  Spring of 2009 we were awarded member positions with Americorps to further develop the BAR Program.  We have been working on both, full scale, this last 6 months. 

Mission & Vision

The mission of the BAR Program is to facilitate active participation of citizens in creating thriving neighborhoods which cross social, ethnic and racial lines.

Successes and Publicity

Although the BAR Program does not directly generate revenue for Buffalo ReUse, our action events have generated a lot of publicity for Buffalo ReUse over the last two years.  Most of the events occur at the store so the events invite more potential visitors.  The breadth of our programs also secure us access to publications we wouldn’t normally be in–for instance, there are no other demolition companies getting 2pg articles in Edible Buffalo–but we did!

This ride showcased the inspiring horticultural work done by several very dedicated individuals and community groups across the city, all with the mutual intent to develop spaces within the urban environment that revitalized, repurposed and transformed the local scenery. Buffalo Reuse, through its Greenspaces and Tool BARn programs, provided support/ services/ materials and labor, for helping out with the development of these spaces into the wonderful places they are today. Viewing the gardens by bicycle was a nice way for us to get up close to the beautiful and healthy bounty offered up by these gardens.

Please take a moment to see what we did, either by taking the ride yourself one day soon (its posted up on our Facebook page) or review the photos of our travels, courtesy of Buffalo Reuse’s very own Caesandra Seawell.

home improvement
gardening
outdoor projects (green houses/decks etc)
green technologies
architecture
sustainability
community building
activism
urban issues
farming
building houses
canning (foods)
tool safety/use
landscaping
inspiring biography
Buffalo history

but please, no sappy romances.
Donators get a 10% coupon!

Books can be dropped off at 298 Northampton St BFLO 14208
any time Tues-Sat 8-6pm or Sun 10-4pm. THANKS!!

Image Courtesy of Nail Jack Tools LLC

The Nail Jack and the Nail Hunter are functionally identical tools, except that the Nail Jack is Larger. Since building deconstruction literally produces tons of lumber studded with nails ranging from 10 inch long spikes to carpet tacks, I decided to use the larger Nail Jack, figuring that it could pull the largest nails but could probably extract any smaller nails as well.

The pile of lumber I de-nailed is a daunting opponent for any nail pulling tool as it consists of a

stack of, mostly 8×8 oak timbers recovered from a 100-year old barn. Typical to old barns, overly large nails were used in its construction, many 8 gauge or larger. Additionally many of the beams bristled with an assortment of smaller nails, cut nails, tacks, and staples used for cross beams, wiring, siding etc… Many of the smaller nails were heavily rusted, bent and embedded into the wood.

Before detailing my reasons I’ll get right to the ending – I think the Nail Jack is a really great and useful tool. It is innovative, seems well built, hardy, and very reasonably priced for contractors and do-it-yourselfers, at about $25 a tool (nippers, $15-$40 depending on quality).

An initial reaction by my colleagues was a “So what, it’s a glorified pair of wire cutters or nippers”. But it isn’t, and only after you start using it does its thoughtful design and utility become apparent.

First, there are the two sets of jaws, beaked jaws in the front and the grooved jaws in the rear that can grab onto nails at any point along the shaft. The narrow internal width of the beaked jaws allows the user to clinch the nail with significant force. Thus the nails do not need an intact head to extract them, just a small exposed piece to affix the jaws onto. The rear jaws are wider and primarily grasp exposed nails, especially large ones, between a set of three teeth so that substantial pulling force can be generated. What sets the Nail Jack apart from a pair of nail nippers is the banana shaped head that allows the user to leverage nails from almost any angle; backward, rolling side to side, or pushing forward when the rear jaws are used. The rear jaws also double a strike plate to hit with a hammer to bring extra force to the nail. I must confess I did not need this as its pulling ability was more than sufficient for the nails I encountered.

The tool’s features clearly sped the work because I could quickly re-adjust the tool back to the starting position to keep maximum force on the nail without having to use wood blocks to increase leverage or switch to tools for different nails or difficult situations. I should also mention that I alternatively used the nail jack with one or two hands and pulled or pushed depending on the situation.

An additional advantage I noticed while de-nailing timbers (as opposed to narrower boards) is that the range of motion of pulling is so wide that I could pull nails relatively easily on the top and sides of the timbers. This necessitated less moving or rolling of the lumber over, making the job easier and faster.

Since you can grip the nail at any place along its length and quickly re-adjust the tool back to where it has maximum leverage, each extraction consists of a sequence of small pulls rather than one long pull. Thus the tool spends more time flat against the wood, spreading the pulling force more widely and causing less damage to the wood. I generally noticed that even gnarly and crooked nails left with holes not much larger than the width of the nail.

In the approximately two hours I spent pulling a few pounds of nails with the Nail Jack I only resorted twice to using a pry bar and the nippers. I required the leverage of the nippers to pull a particularly long (~8 inches, upper right corner of photo) and crooked nail. To be fair this nail barely fit in the jaws.

The one downside I encountered with the Nail Jack is that there is a spring that pops the tool open as the default state. This spring, located in the rear jaws seems somewhat vulnerable to damage. In fact the spring in our tool developed a kink (last photo) after I used the rear jaws to push out an 8 gauge nail. I believe the force of the nail head pressed against the spring damaged it (it got the nail out though). Despite the kink the spring is still functioning but I believe it will succumb to metal fatigue relatively soon. We have contacted Nail Jack Tools and it appears that the spring can be easily replaced or used without it. I personally liked the spring loaded action as it readied the tool quickly for the next pull.

So in conclusion I highly recommend the Nail Jack. I believe that home renovators or re-used material carpenters will find this tool very useful. I also believe that the spring may not be a big issue for lighter duty jobs. The Buffalo ReUse is particularly hard on tools and, all in all, I thought this tool did an excellent job and fared well under tough conditions. 

Saturday, February 28th at 3pm, we will be teaching how to replace subflooring in our upstairs kitchen, where a past roof leak left major damage.  If you have any water-damaged floors, common in kitchens and bathrooms, this workshop is definitely for you.

We’re still concerned about heating over at 153 Eaton, in fact even more so now that we’ve had our energy audit (thanks so much to those of you who came out Saturday!), so on Sunday, March 1st at 3pm, we will be glazing our windows. Glazing is easy, reduces heat loss from windows to half, and costs far less than completely new windows would!  We’ve got plenty of windows for practicing!
Come over this weekend, invite family and friends, and kick off March right–with the skills to replace weak flooring and keep the cold outside where it belongs!  Anybody interested in starring in some training videos?  Look at these guys!

buffalobasics {at} gmail(.)com

Sanding Hardwood Floors

February 14th at 1pm or February 15th at 3pm (each workshop will cover the entire process, you do not need to attend both!)
At their lab/house, 153 Eaton, BFLO 14208

A few notes on workshops:

• The sanding workshop should last about an hour, but may extend longer as we want to allow plenty of hands-on experience to all attendees.
• We appreciate a registration/rsvp in advance at buffalobasics {at} gmail(.)com  but will take as many walk-ins as possible with priority given to our neighbors.
• Limit of 15 participants in each workshop.
• Please tell your friends and family to join us!

Fill that tool belt between your ears!  Our first organizational meeting is at Belmont Shelter Corp. (1195 Main St) this Saturday Jan. 31st at 11am to determine what workshops will be offered, make a schedule and pool resources etc.
Partnering with ReUse, Megan McNally & Whitney Yax are providing the space for you to have a hands-on demos and learning experience in a real, DIY home improvement laboratory!  They just purchased a house on Eaton St and while they are gutting and rehabbing it, they’re offering workshops and demonstrations (and the chance to swing a sledge) to anyone who is interested–everything from basic plumbing repairs to installing drywall to growing a healthy vegetable garden.  What they need is your input–what skills do you want to learn?  What tools do you want to learn to use?  What expertise might you already have and be willing to lend?  We have kickstarted a list, but now’s your chance to toss around the ideas and meet other folks with the same goals.
Hope to see you Saturday!
If you cannot attend but you’d like to stay informed, email buffalobasics {at} gmail(.)com.

We believe people should have access to the tools they need to make their neighborhoods a source of pride.

So, if you have used tools, extra tools or tools you never knew how to operate and want to donate them–we’ll take them anytime, but specifically Friday and Saturday at The ReSource, 298 Northampton. Saturday we will also be at Daemen, participating in the Environmental Summit, and we’ll have a drop off location outside of the Wick Center so if also there (it’s THE place to be) stop by from 9-12:30 and smile real big!

Dave Sheffield took it upon himself to apply for some gift cards at Home Depot and we are so glad for their support and Dave’s initative! Thanks a ton!

We have a lot of work to do before we can officially open the doors for folks to borrow tools–including branding all the tools and organizing the “barn.” If you have time on your hands and a desire to assist, please contact me at volunteer {at} buffaloreuse(.)org Click on the photo to see pics of what we’ve done so far.

As always, you will receive a tax deduction for materials or tools donated to Buffalo ReUse and if the item is too large (like a table saw or lawn mower or something like that) we are happy to pick it up.