How Wood Shows Should Be

One thing that I like going to a woodshow for, is seeing all the new products that are (or soon will be) available. The “Alternate Woodshow” is no exception – Professional Woodworkers Supplies have quite a number of brand-new products they will be showcasing (along with a whole heap of other recent additions over the past year)

These images are taken from the PWS website btw (and their emailed newsletter).  If you are not a subscriber, you can do so here.

Converter Pro Calculator

Adds imperial, metric and decimal imperial together in a single operation.  Calculations such as

17/64″ + 11mm – 2.3mm are easy.  Equals 19/32″ or 15.44687mm btw.

Pocket Chisel Set

Pocket Chisel

A chisel set where the individual chisels can be folded up, protecting the blade (and yourself!)

Quad Trimmer

With its ergonomic design, the Quad Trimmer trims edge banding in all directions.

Fastbreak Edger

It allows you to uniformly break or ariss  the edge on sharp melamine or timber material in just one pass.

Flushcut Trimmer

Trims overhanging edging easily with a single cut – no knives, blades etc required.

1.6mm Radius Plane

Quickly and simply break the edge of a project without routers, uneven sandpaper edge breaking etc.

Blind Nailer

Blind Nailer

Sometimes a quick nail is all that is needed to hold a project together until the glue dries.  Why leave yourself a hole to fill for the sake of a convenient nail?

Cabinetmaker Layout Tape

Layout Drill Bit

Making a cabinet and want a row of evenly spaced holes (especially if using the European System 32 hardware)?  This tape sticks on, you drill through it, then peel it off and throw it away.  The tape helps prevent bit slippage, aids accurate hole placement without needing a jig, and helps prevent breakout caused by the drill bit.

Artisan Accent

Artisan Accent Tool

Want the look of a pinned joint when the work involved isn’t justified?  This quickly creates the cavity for an ebony coloured plastic plug to be glued in place giving the impression that a lot more work was involved in the project than what there was.

Triton Retail Outlets

A little speculation, based on some mention of business movements in Australia.

Triton will not be seen again in Bunnings, but they will not want to miss on that sort of distribution network.

They are currently being sold through Dahlsens, and a workcentre is listed in their current catalogue. (Australian company, Australian spelling 😉 ) Check out page 4

There is some mention that Woolworths have or are going to take Dahlsens over – interesting too that a John Dahlsen is mentioned as ex head of Woolworths, and a John Dahlsen is also one of Dahlsen’s top 20 shareholders.  Couple that with recent announcements of Woolworths and Lowes getting in bed together to bring that megachain to Australia in competition with Bunnings, and Triton is starting to look like it is placed in quite an interesting position for again achieving Australia-wide distribution despite the loss of Bunnings.

Testing the New Photocopier

There is a new copier at work, with scan to email capabilities.  So I thought I might as well try it out.  Completely irrelevant to woodworking obviously.

Some of my old navy photos

Exercise Kakadu 2 1995

HMNZS WAIKATO 1996

HMNZS TE KAHA Commissioning 22 July 1997

Reviews Off, Tools On

Over the past couple of days, I have been plodding along in the background creating quite a time-intensive replacement for the Reviews section.  It was seriously out-of-date, and getting worse by the day.

So the Reviews tab at the top of the site has now vanished, and has been replaced by a “Tools” tab. (This name is not locked in – if you think there is a better name, let me know, so long as it is short).

It is meant to be a better reflection of the culture of this website too – as much as I do review tools, I think there is a large benefit in seeing tools actually being used being the best endorsement, and not just a breakdown of the tool itself.  After all- when we want to know whether to get a tool for ourselves, it is so much better to get the opinion of someone who owns and uses the tool (and their reasons why), than reading the commercial copy / advertising that surrounds an addition to the market.

That is not to say that where I do review tools that will cease.  What will happen (and has already for those listed), is one of the articles linked will be the actual review, but there are also links to other articles where the tool can be seen in actual use.  Over time this will give you a much better appreciation of just how any given tool is working in a real workshop environment.  (And by tool, I mean everything, including courses, and even iPhone Applications that are relevant to the workshop).  Where the article is a video, this is listed separately – some will have articles (A1 A2 etc), some videos (V1 V2), and some will have both!  Some don’t have either for one reason or another, so I guess you can take that as being reviews/articles that are in various stages of progress!

Let me know what you think.

Oh, and I will get around to changing the order of the titles at some stage, but I’m well and truly over writing HTML for a day or so!!!