Toolversed is one of the newest tool review sites, that came online at the start of 2016 according to this press release
It seems to primarily focus on tools available through Amazon, which is not so useful for those of us down under, as I don’t think we can buy anything other than books & DVDs still (but that may have changed).
They recently did a review of woodworking blogs, and Stu’s Shed was chosen as one of the top 25, although there were some notable exceptions in the list.
Decided to have a look around the review site, see what was being found. Being US based, I wasn’t surprised I didn’t recognise many of the brands, but there were categories I thought some of the brands I like would have made the list. Festool? Doesn’t make the grade, not for sanders, nor drop saws or anything else for that matter. Didn’t even make the review list.
Try again: Triton? Well at least the brand made a minor appearance, as one of the belt sanders had been looked at (and not surprisingly, well down the list). Surprised their router didn’t make an appearace.
Sawstop? Nup. Apparently the best tablesaw is a Dewalt portable, and the best portable is a Bosch.
Powermatic? MagSwitch? Incra? Woodpeckers? No, x4
Jet? Finally, found one where Jet managed to make a hit, as the best wood lathe. Nova / Teknatool, especially the DVR XP? nup.
Bummer. Hopefully the range of what is reviewed will continue to improve- at this stage it seems to be only Amazon-based. However, seeing as the US can seemingly buy Festool through Amazon, I’m surprised it didn’t get more of a mention.
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I actually buy quite a few tools from Amazon. Not power tools obviously (because of the different mains power voltage in the US) – and I’d probably never buy battery “skin only” tools there either, because of possible problems down the line with international warranties.
However, it’s great for all the accessories and consumables. Festool clamps, track stops, splinterguards, splinterguard strip etc used to work out loads cheaper (when the exchange rate was good). Nowadays it’s still a little cheaper in most cases. Amazon themselves stock quite a bit of festool stuff (often when you search for something on amazon you’ll find a lot of it is supplied by their “marketplace” sellers – and many of those won’t ship to Australia).
Just a couple of weeks ago I ordered a whole bunch of magswitch featherboards. Even with the current ho-hum exchange rate it worked out cheaper than buying them from Carbatec. The shipping charges can be a killer – tools are often heavy, and you pay for weight.
As an excercise I just threw two magswitch universal featherboards and a magswitch starter kit into an amazon cart to calculate the final delivered price: AUD $241. From Cabatec (who do free shipping for orders over $200), it would be AUD $255 delivered. Nearly $15 cheaper. Not an amazing discount, but if you’re buying a fair load of stuff it adds up. Also, the shipping is a lot more reasonable with lighter things, so you can save a lot more.
And lastly, Amazon have (finally) delt with the biggest frustration in buying tools from them: when you search for something, you can now filter the results to show *only* items that will ship to australia (no more having to browse to each item to see a message saying “… does not ship to {your suburb}”. You’ll need to be logged in with your amazon account to see that option I think.
Thanks for the update – that is all very interesting! It is probably a good thing I wasn’t so aware of it when the exchange rate was at parity – would have been very dangerous!!