I have told you in earlier newsletters about my own little project that has been going on for a couple of years now. I may be starting to see the end, somewhere past the middle of the project. I have got some lights up in the ceiling of the room where the saw stands, so now it is easier to see what you are doing and you can be there for longer periods. I have also got three-phase power to the saw, so now I don't have to run two 25m cables from the main house, up one floor, to saw. It also stands on a cart so it can be pushed back and forth in the room.
Since the slot in the panel doesn't fit 3/4", a miter channel rail had to be added as close to the blade as possible. I thought about it for quite a while and think I got it to work. It will be even better when the next step is done. The router table that will be on the left side of the rail will help stabilise everything.
The panel lying there is probably not the one that will be used in the end, but it will do as a template for further work. This gives about 60cm of surface on the left side of the blade, and I can do something similar on the right side, and then you get up to 160cm of "table". So that feels good. The router table itself will contain a router lift and will use the fence from the Incra LS; you can add the router fence to the existing saw fence. You only need to slide the rear part forward to the edge of the metal table, and then it reaches as far as where the router lift is to sit.
I will make a separate post here on the blog about the whole project later; a smaller update will come in a newsletter when the router lift is in place. Ever since the start of Rubank Verktygs we have been keen on education. We give students who study full-time at the schools that focus on fine woodworking and sloyd/crafts a discount so they can start building up their tool arsenals. We also try to visit the schools when we have visits from "profiles" in our field so the students get the chance to see them work and ask questions. Unfortunately the pandemic years removed much of this, but we hope to be able to step it up again. (A bit more about this later.) Another way is to help external profiles who strike a blow for education and fine woodworking. We have long had a category of our own that we called the school menu, where we had tools that we thought suited, for example, schools, so they don't have to buy the mediocre tools they now have to buy. We have started to review this and have also added teachers/schools that run courses. They have the opportunity to put up their favourites among our products that they want to recommend to their students. If the students buy those products they get a discount on them, and a smaller kickback goes to the teacher/school. The idea came from Fabricio Gatica (https://gaticasnickeri.se/kurser), based in Gothenburg, and we thought it was a brilliant idea, so we got going with it right away. He has had his page since last year and from what we have heard (and see) it has been popular among the students. Fabricio also has other projects and the latest is instruction films posted on YouTube. The channel is called Träslöjden (https://www.youtube.com/@Träslöjden/videos) and it is described like this: "The purpose of the channel is to preserve the Swedish technical vocabulary and the craft traditions while encouraging more craft! The films are recorded at Nääs Slöjdseminarium. A place for sloyd since 1872 where you can still take courses in many different types of craft today, see the links below. The films were produced with support from the Board for Home Crafts Issues (Nämnden för hemslöjdsfrågor)."
This Saturday it is Open House again; in recent weeks we have received deliveries from Veritas, JessEm and Bahco, so the shelves are quite full if anyone wants to visit. We are there 10-14 as usual. Speaking of deliveries, at the time of writing a pallet is being picked up at Lost Art Press with books and tools. We are getting the two new books that were released earlier this autumn. Both are one-time, they will not print another edition, so we have brought in what we hope will last a while. We are also restocking with more books in Swedish; we now have about 60 titles in Swedish and we keep looking for more. We have also started to list the 200-odd books in our library. We also have a number of older books that we sell through the antiquarian bookshop. Everything can be found here: the Woodworking Bookshop Next week it is autumn break for us too. We are closed and travelling over to England to educate ourselves a little. Besides building a tool chest, we hope there will be many conversations about this and that.. But it means no orders will be shipped that week, they will be shipped when we are back; we hope you will bear with us. We will post what we are up to on our social media, so keep an eye out there.
I thought I would give a few more clues about what is coming soon. More space, more shelf metres, education.. We look forward to that. I hope you will too. I will finish with a little strip from Calvin and Hobbes (Kalle och Hobbe). I think the spirit of it works for those of you who work with crafts too.
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