Gravesham Repair Café

October 14th each year is International E-Waste Day which aims to highlight the issue of electrical and electronic waste and its responsible management. Again this year there is The Great Cable Challenge encouraging everyone to pass along their unwanted electrical cables for recycling.  The copper they contain is a valuable resource and easily reused.   You don't need to wait until October.  You may bring your unwanted cables to any of our Repair Café events ( calendar ) and we'll make sure they are recycled properly.  Alternatively you can take them to the usual electrical recycling points along with any other unwanted electrical or electronic items. Learn more... International E-Waste Day The Great Cable Guide Find your nearest Recycling point for the Gravesend area

We expected this session of the Repair Café to be quieter than usual due to it being school holidays and such like.  But no, plenty of folk visited with items for repair. At the same time we were joined by the Crafty Yarns sewing group who busied themselves throughout. We now have a tool & blade sharpening machine at Gravesend and Roy is becoming quite adept with it.  In this session Roy sharpened shears, secateurs and other items including the blade of a hover mower. Let's start with photos of "sharpening corner".   This is the Craft Yarns corner:  Meanwhile other members were tackling many items ranging from an exercise machine to a pepper grinder. The exercise machine   Visitors register their repair requirement at Reception The pepper grinder

We are offering a free bike repair service at the Cyclopark between 11am and 3pm.  If you or your children need a bike repaired you know where to come.   The Tollgate Watling Street Gravesend DA11 7NP It is signposted off the roundabout on Wrotham Road (opposite the Morrisons junction): And then a turning into the Cyclopark: Parking   Under 30 minutes    FREE Blue Badge Holders  FREE Up to 4 hours       £1.90 Over 4 hours / All Day  £7.00

Possibly the hottest day of the year - or was that yesterday? Despite the weather, we had plenty of visitors, many with electric fans that needed attention (little surprise there). Of special note was the extending (a lot) pruner for trimming the branches of tall trees.  It made its first appearance at Gravesend last week appearing to be a simple matter of replacing the broken cord that operated it.  But is was so complicated threading a new cord that it had to return at Vigo and our heroic member Robert spent nearly the full four hours doing battle with it.  Perseverance was rewarded in the final minutes. Here it is at last.  Well, the lower end at least. We couldn't extend the pruner to its full height for the photo or it would have poked through the roof.     Those electric fans?  Broken switches, disconnected cables, jammed motors ...  Here's just one being worked on: Plus the usual fare of bikes, food mixers, electric garden tools, kitchen ap...

Recently a sub group of Gravesham Repair Café needed an overlocker (a special kind of sewing machine) for their sewing projects.  This group by the name of Crafty Yarns has its own Facebook page and it’s definitely worth checking out. ‘Wanted’ requests were placed on websites like Freecycle, Freegle and Olio.  Elizzy quickly responded offering an overlocker and even personally delivered it today at St George’s Church Hall. While Elizzy stayed for a coffee and chat we established that she wanted a bike and a laptop. Amazingly one of our volunteer repairers had a bike that he wanted to move on and another felt confident of sourcing a laptop for her.  It seems that by Elizzy helping us source an overlocker she'll be the happy recipient of the bike and laptop she wanted. Meanwhile, our team of repairers was at work dealing with clocks, fans, toaster, wildlife camera, a very long tree pruner and more...    

It was a warm sunny day.  Our team of repairers dealt with a typical range of items - power supplies, radios, vacuum cleaners, even a snapped wooden bannister.  Meanwhile we were joined by the ladies creating emergency blankets out of empty crisp packets.       Earlier in the year we received a donation from Gravesham Friendly  and we are happy to display their pull-up banner.   

This website author has not been able to attend lately, but colleagues have provided some photos.   Gravesend May 2025   Vigo May 2025