I first shopped at Rubank on 5 May 2013. The order was worth about 2,100 SEK. It was a few chisels, a marking gauge and two saws, plus a book, Snickra träleksaker (Making Wooden Toys). I had become a father for the first time just a month earlier, and thought I would take up an old dream of making things/furniture of my own, together with my then newborn son. I have always liked working in wood, was probably not the best in the class, but things got made. During my teens computers were more of a draw, so the craft disappeared for 20-25 years, until I was going to build my own house in the mid-2000s. I did like many others and started hanging out on Byggahus.se, learned things, interacted with others, and the house was almost finished, a divorce came in between, and I left the house to its fate. The woodworking died out for a few years too, but then I met my future and current wife, we found an older house to move into, and the dream came back straight away. I set up a small carpentry shed in the built-in garage, fixed mouldings, window sills and other things that needed attention, rebuilt the kitchen, and in the middle of all this the first son arrives. In the following years I started hanging out on Byggahus.se again and came into contact with a whole bunch of happy craftsmen, both business owners and private individuals, whose great interest was carpentry (fine woodworking). One of them was Johan, who a few years earlier had started Rubank and begun selling quality tools from Veritas and Lie-Nielsen in Sweden. Over the following 3-4 years I bought more tools and learned a great deal, from my friends and from what you found in the English or American woodworking magazines I subscribed to. I perhaps didn't make so many things during these years; house, children and work took almost all my time. But a little got done. In 2017 I became unemployed after a bankruptcy and I began to wonder what to do for the rest of my life. Continuing with what I had worked with since upper secondary school was not an option, that road was finished. The urge to build things was always in the back of my mind. I wondered whether I should go back to school and study woodcraft; not far from where we live is Vårdinge Folk High School, which has a very good 2-year woodworking programme. However, I had become a father for the second time and couldn't quite bring myself to start studying when things looked the way they did at home. I am impressed by everyone who makes such a journey, but I felt it wouldn't have worked for me or for the family. While I was on parental leave and thus really unemployed, I asked one of my newfound woodworking friends, who had a carpentry workshop of his own, whether I could come by one day a week just to watch and learn. A very instructive time, which ended with a "final assignment", a piece of furniture I got to design and build entirely myself. It became a desk for my son Erik.
In the autumn of 2017 Johan asked whether I could come and help him at Rubank two days a week, and about half a year later I started working full-time. I am often asked by customers who come into the shop how much I still do woodworking myself. I usually say that the day I started at Rubank was the last one in the woodworking shed. That isn't entirely true, but it is close to the truth. It is nothing I have regretted; helping customers realise their dreams is perfectly fine too. And I can't really complain about the workplace either; being able to do woodworking during working hours was what I wanted to do..
Every day is a learning experience, teaching others who ask how something works or receiving knowledge from our fantastic customers who like to share their expertise. My kids think woodwork is fun at school, and I know that in the near future we will be building things together, just as I dreamed that day, 5 May 2013.. We have now been in Västberga for 15 months, we are still settling in, and over the summer we have moved things around a bit and got a better hand tools department. After we changed software for the webshop we have also started taking inventory of everything we have in the shop, and in doing so we find some products that we hadn't got up in the shop. You set them aside when the delivery comes in to enter them later, yes, if you remember to, that is. Oh well, better late than never. A good page to have as a favourite is our "new products page"; https://rubank.se/sv/nya-produkter, where new things keep appearing, and the things we "forgot"..
Two such products are from Real Milk Paint, or as they are called today, RMP Finishes, a family business in Tennessee, USA. We carry several parts of their broad range, of course the milk paint, but also oils, waxes and pigments, if you want to mix your own colours. Their Finishing Creams are described, for example, by Megan Fitzpatrick like this: "It's easy to apply: put on gloves, use a rag (or a damp sponge or roller) to spread on a thin coat, then trust the process and wait until it dries. When first applied the colour is darker – but just as promised it dries clear and matte and gives _nearly_ exactly the same colour as before application. That's enough for me, at any rate." You will find these and many other surface and finishing products here; https://rubank.se/sv/2154-ytbehandling
Another manufacturer that has updated its products is Knew Concepts, with their very popular (and unfortunately much copied) saws. They have come out with a new version, the MK V, with an improved blade attachment. There is now a small hole where you can see how far in you have got the blade. Previously it was a bit uncertain whether you were far enough in for the blade to get a proper grip from the screw. We have a few versions of the new model at home and have ordered more, which should arrive now at the end of the summer. https://rubank.se/sv/brand/32-knew-concepts Johan has spent the summer at their summer house in Finnish Ostrobothnia and has written a small reflection;
Kuliss – an exhibition about theatre scenery from the early 1900s. Summer is not just about swimming and reading. You can also fit in visits to interesting exhibitions. For example a visit to a temporary exhibition in Kristinestad in Finnish Ostrobothnia. It is a small town with lovely wooden-house architecture and a lot of history, above all in fishing and shipping. But in the older wooden houses there is also a lot else to find. If you peek under the layers in the old houses you find old wallpapers, all the way back to the first half of the 1800s! In the same house where these older wallpapers are displayed, we also get to see a collection of theatre sets from the 1910s that were used in the town's theatre life. During the second half of the 1800s and into the 1900s theatre life flourished in Kristinestad. The town's Dramatic Society staged ambitious productions in the town hall and often played the same plays that were performed on the big stages in Helsinki. The society's members came mainly from the town's leading social strata, but their activity also testifies to a broad cultural ambition and a strong will to bring the performing arts to a smaller coastal town. The exhibition's great attraction is the historic sets, still owned by the town of Kristinestad. They were painted by the Danish decorative painter and artist Peder Knudsen, active in Helsinki and known as one of the foremost scenographers of his time. The sets are not merely practical stage backdrops – they are works of art in themselves, created with great craftsmanship and a feeling for drama and illusion. Through these preserved scenes the visitor gets an insight into how the theatre worked before film and television took their place in people's everyday lives. The sets tell of a time when the audience travelled through imagination, from manor houses and salons to forests and exotic landscapes, using only brush, canvas and stage lighting. At the same time Kuliss is about more than theatre history. It raises questions about how cultural heritage is preserved and how local stories can gain new life through research and exhibitions. That the sets have survived despite the Dramatic Society's activity ceasing in the 1950s makes them an unusually well-preserved piece of cultural-historical material. The exhibition shows how a small town could play a significant role in Finland's Swedish-speaking cultural life. It also reminds us that theatre has always been a joint project – where artists, actors, craftspeople and audience together created experiences that lived on long after the curtain went down.
We have just received a new delivery from Lie-Nielsen. Goods from Pegas, Veritas and JessEm are coming shortly. We hope for deliveries from Shinwa and Briwax before autumn. Mark Saturday 5 September in your calendars. Then we are organising an event outside the shop, Hantverk & Verktyg (Craft & Tools). Together with several of our suppliers we will show off tools, and there will be other craftspeople and private individuals who are happy to share their knowledge. There will also be an opportunity to buy used tools. More info at this link to our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/events/4392110644402720
Summer isn't over yet, we are open all the time in the shop and ship orders as fast as we can. If the weather is not nice after all, a good book can be perfect for improving yourself; we have both Swedish and English books on craft. Lost Art Press is working on getting a pallet out with what is sold out and their newest titles that we haven't received yet.. https://rubank.se/sv/73-snickeribokhandeln You are never too old for new knowledge. We will talk again in the autumn..
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