Plans
Where this is going, honestly. What exists today, what we are building next, and the dream — clearly labeled as a dream. No dates promised; when something ships, it moves up this page.
Where we are now
Domains registered, site live
greatfallstoolbus.org is registered and serving the page you are reading. What is written here is the current truth — when reality changes, the site changes.
Tool kits forming
Donated tools are being kitted for transport — carts, cases, chests, marked bits. The sewing cell is first out of the gate.
Ways to reach us, in the works
A keyholders mailing list and a contact form are being stood up. Until they open, access works the human way: you reach out, a keyholder answers.
Near term — this season
Keyholders mailing list
A mailing list with a public archive, so lending conversations and decisions stay readable by anyone who cares to look.
Contact form
A bot-guarded form on this site, so reaching the bus does not require already knowing someone.
Printable cell sheets
A one-page printable sheet per tool cell: what is in the kit, how it travels, and who its captain is.
More cells
New cells open as tools and captains arrive — a cell needs both before it rolls.
The dream — labeled as a dream
The tool bus did not invent anything. Tool libraries have been lending drills and ladders to neighbors for more than forty years, and hackerspaces and makerspaces have spent decades refining the design patterns — kits, captains, keyholders, honest signage — that keep a shared shop working. We borrow shamelessly from both traditions.
Lewiston-Auburn grew up around the Great Falls of the Androscoggin — mills, millwrights, and people who fixed their own machines. A shared tool library on wheels feels like a fitting next chapter for a place built on making things, and the bus is how that chapter starts small.
Someday we would love a permanent shop: a real lab with benches, dust collection, and room to teach. That is the dream, not a plan — no dates, no building, no entity yet. This is a bus; the shop comes later. In the very long run, that lab ambition connects to our webmaster Jess’s tinyland.dev explorations — an aspiration she tinkers toward, not an existing business.
How to help right now
Donate a tool — that is the whole ask. Until an entity exists, tool donations are the only kind the project accepts, and nothing on this site is a charitable solicitation. Everything else that helps — time, know-how, a captain for a new cell — starts with reaching out to a keyholder.