Looking for a Lifestyle Change?

The Lumber Bunker, in West Gosford on the Central Coast (east) of Australia is currently for sale as a going concern.

The Lumber Bunker

Its asking price is $A20,000 (plus fixtures etc at cost), on eBay of all places!  I can honestly say I’ve never seen a business sold on eBay before, but then I can also say I’ve never looked!

It is near surf beaches, so if you are looking for that lifestyle change, here’s one possibility.

Of course, as a woodworker I would have one concern – it would be like a drug dealer too addicted to their own product.  How could you bring yourself to sell stunning timber that you’d rather be going into one of your own projects (or you have a project on, and you find yourself shopping for timber in your own store – I’d never have anything left to sell!!)

The Phoenix is Arising!

I have it on expert authority (and I will protect my sources here) that some of the Triton range is now back in production, with the remainder of the manufactured range (as opposed to power tools (I don’t have a source of information on those)) being bought back on line in the near future.

As has been know for quite a while, Diver Consolidated Industries (DCI) in northern Melbourne were tooling up to take over production from the aging Triton plant in Cheltenham, and they are now in production mode.

See the ABC Inside Business Program of June 14th 2009

DCI from all reports is a very high quality manufacturer who have been producing parts for the automotive industry for 60 years, and who are now the new home for the manufacture of Triton. They are an Australian manufacturer, and what’s more are bringing back onshore some of the production that had been outsourced to China (and elsewhere?), and you know how I feel about local manufacturing!  I so hope that this means we will once again see Australian made Superjaws and Multistands – they should have NEVER left Aussie shores!

DCI have 3rd party quality accreditation, and are going over every aspect of the manufacturing of the products to address any concerns that previously existed with the range.

Please don’t send me your lists (yet), but they will be wanting feedback from existing owners about what quality concerns you have, and what spares you want to see (as a priority).  Certainly start composing an answer to that question, but I will let you know when (and where) that information is needed.  I don’t have any way of sourcing spares, so please don’t ask! (I know there is a lot of orange tools out there hurting at the moment waiting for spares to once again become available – at least be assured that their availability is much more certain now that it ever has been over the past, long, 12 months!

At this stage I can tell you that the Workcentre, Router Table, Powered Saw Table, Finger Jointer and Dust Buckets are all in production. When they will be available on the Australian market is yet to be determined, as is how they will be distributed.  But keep your ears open for news in the coming weeks.

I will certainly be interested in supporting the products again through Stu’s Shed, be that training videos, product reviews, and if I can add them to my “Store” I will do that too.

Best news out of all this (in addition to that it is happening at all), is that the manufacturing is back fully in Australian hands where the users can directly input into the manufacturing where there are issues, and improvements that can be made, and a company with a solid quality assurance program, who is willing to listen and make product improvements is handling the manufacturing.

The name is still Triton, the product is still orange, and it is still going to be proudly Australian Made!! YOU BLOODY RIPPER!!

The Tattooed Woodworker

One of our fellow woodworking bloggers in the USA has been receiving an absolute wave of hatemail comments recently, to the extent that he shut down his blog (and was considering walking away from woodworking altogether).

Through a combined effort of the woodworking community, he has been convinced to not give it all away, and to keep his blog going (hopefully he will repost his earlier content at some stage)

Some of the comments he was getting were quite amazing – have no doubt that if I had been on the receiving end of the stuff being chucked his way, I would have shut this site down and walked away too.

Anyway, this is just to bring his site to your attention, and is my way of showing that there are significantly more appreciative people out there than the few wankers who were happy to tear him down.

I have received very little negative criticism here, and only a little constructive criticism which hopefully I have assimilated to improve this site for you, so I have been very fortunate. Perhaps as I was starting, most of my visitors were Australian, and who knows, perhaps there is a cultural difference I am not aware of.  Visitors now are 40% Australian, 40% from the USA, and the other 20% is across the world.  All I can say is I do appreciate you all – and when you have taken the time to comment/email etc that has and is always welcome.

Comments are great – it is through these as much as anything that the direction of this site is slowly tailored to best suit what you, my gentle readers (to quote Stephen King again) want from me.