Chicago Tool Library

✨People are making amazing things happen with their Tool Library memberships!✨

This library user was able to use her CTL membership to frame and drywall a new closet, build garden boxes with paver bases, and do some plumbing repairs - all in a few months!

What can YOU do with a CTL membership??

🥵😮‍💨WHEEWWWW y’all this week has been rough with short-staffing and SO MANY CAMPING ORDERS, but our guy Nick saved us from certain destruction!!!

Thank you Nick for spending hours volunteering in the heat to wash sleeping bags, clean tents, and generally make sure our camping program survived July!!!!

Side note: anybody want to donate a large capacity front loading washer??? 🧼🫧🧺

🏖️Heads up, crew, we are taking our cherished summer break from July 1-7!

Plan your projects accordingly and be kind to our lovely team who are working their butts off in our busiest season!🍑❤️

We will return refreshed and ready for more tool lending on July 8th!

⚡️Our Tool of the Week is the moisture meter!⚡️

This tool measures the percentage of water in wood. You can use it to test how dry your deck or fence is before staining it; test firewood before burning; test kiln dried wood before doing woodworking projects and minimize shrinkage and splits; test your wood studs after basement flooding and mold mitigation.

It’s a simple tool with a lot of uses and you can borrow it from The Chicago Tool Library!💗

🛠️For SEVEN YEARS or repair volunteers have been our strongest volunteer team - sweethearts, geniuses, weirdos, angels👼

We’re expanding our repair volunteer shifts to Saturdays AND Sundays to grow the crew and fix more stuff for The Community.

If you’re good at fixing engines, motors, electronics, tools, sewing machines, 3D printers - anything, we need you!

Sign up for a Saturday or Sunday shift at chicagotoollibrary.org/calendar and tinker for a good cause!

🗓️Join us on Saturday, June 6th for a FREE ✨Camping 101 Workshop✨ presented by !

Learn useful skills like:
🌲Choosing a campsite
⛺️Setting up a tent
🔥Building a campfire
🧯Following safety guidelines

Plus explore CTL’s gear collection and enjoy FREE refreshments! See you there!

🏕️It’s time to get OUTSIDE outside and CTL has so much camping gear you can borrow!🎣

Our team has been working hard to get the gear ready for you, so head to our website and reserve all the gear you need for your summer trip!

Mark your calendar now for our next Repair Fair on 5/30! 🛠️🪛🔬🧵🚲🔌💡

Repair Fairs are free community events where you can bring your broken and beloved bikes, clothes, appliances, and more and our skilled repair volunteers will fix them.

Depending on volunteer availability, we can generally attempt repairs related to:
- small appliances
- clothing and fabric
- costume jewelry
- small electronics
- tool and blade sharpening
- bikes
- so much more!

We can’t fix:
- gas tools
- broken screens
- fine jewelry
- sewing machines
- items that need to be welded

***Due to increasing event popularity, we now have a limit of 2 items per person and 1 knife sharpening per person of sharpening is available!***

**Obviously we cannot guarantee any repairs and cannot guarantee an item won’t be damaged during repair in rare cases, especially with so many household items being made of easily-breakable plastic.**

If you are interested in volunteering at this event as a repair helper please visit chicagotoollibrary.org/volunteer to learn more and sign up.

🔥BIG NEWS: we are expanding our hours later this month and adding SUNDAYS to the schedule!!!!!!🔥

Starting soon our hours will be:
• WED 12-7pm
• THU 12-7pm
• FRI 10am-4pm
• SAT 10am-4pm
• SUN 10am-4pm

🤩Please join us in thanking and welcoming our 2026 board of directors!

We are thrilled to have the support and guidance of this talented group of folks and we can’t wait to see what CTL accomplishes under their leadership.

Welcome to:
• Frances Grinnan
• Pen Howell
• Allison James
• Ellen Partridge
• Gayle Spinazze
• Ciera Smith

Thanks for another year:
• Donna Bracey
• Sam Gorzelany
• Jackie Guzman
• Osama Hasan
• Paul Hinze
• Matt McGrane
• David Mendoza
• Sasha Neri
• Nakia Oldham
• Jonathan Pereira
• Syd Rothman