It now feels as if winter is starting to leave us (at least in southern Sweden) and you have to start thinking about what spring brings with it, and one thing is pollen. I am sensitive to it myself, not so that I have to hide away during this time, but I feel it and in the worst case take medicine. And I have bought air purifiers this year that stand in the bedroom and the living room at home, the places where we spend most time; I hope they will make this spring a little easier. And pollen reminds me of the fine wood dust you get when working wood. And luckily there are good ways to protect yourself in the woodworking shed too. We have long had products to protect against this, and are now running a sale that is unusual for us. All Trend masks in the category "Protective equipment" have 20% off. (While stocks last.) We are running it during the spring, as long as the pollen bothers us..
We have written several times that the shop is very full and we need more room for other things that are coming. So we also have a special sale on the JET air purifiers we have in stock. On the ones that are left we have 25% off. Valid until they are gone. It is an effective, quiet purifier that can be put on a bench or hung up. We have set one up in the shop, so we get cleaner air there too.
A few weeks ago we got an email from Lie-Nielsen saying they could send some things to us. The delivery came a good week ago and we have a few #4 and #5 left. We hope there can now start to be somewhat more regular deliveries from them. Even if they are small, it is better than none at all. Lie-Nielsen has changed the wood species on certain parts, and we got some with these. Among others, the saws have these new handles.
Another category that many perhaps miss that we have quite a lot of products in is Finishes. There we have collected paint, oil, wax and accessories. I wrote a little about it last time and have since been busy cleaning up the website a bit. One of the products I personally like is milk paint. Good-looking, simple, durable and environmentally friendly. That it is also approved for use on toys doesn't make it any worse. I posted an article about finishing toys on our blog. When we put up the delivery from Real Milk Paint, it wasn't done so well, a long row of shades that never ended, in different sizes that you didn't know what they were. We got a few comments from you about that, and have for some time now improved how it looks. I am quite pleased myself and hope you think it became an improvement too. There are several new functions in the shop that should make it easier to find and choose the right variant.
The first thing you see is in the category view. Where there are products that have "sub-products", such as the milk paint, you now see a main picture with the colour and which packages you can get it in. Under the large picture there are smaller pictures of the packages that are in stock. If you don't see the package, it is sold out. If you are sitting at a computer, you can also hover the mouse over the small pictures and see a larger version of them in the large window.
If you find a colour you would like to buy, you go into the product; since there are sub-products you can't buy directly from the category, and there you see the same options as before, but with a different picture. Select the one you want, choose the quantity and press Buy. This function also exists on the planes that are sold as packages, where we only have, for example, one blade. There you see pictures of the products that are included. (You don't choose anything there, it is more a visual confirmation of what you get with the purchase.)
Another function that I personally have missed is for categories with more than 15 products. You have had to press "page 2, 3 etc." to see more. Now this happens automatically. When you get down to the bottom, the next page is loaded, and 15 new products appear. It takes a second before it starts loading, but I think it works well. I hope you appreciate it too.
We also feel that it is a bit hard to find your way on the site and have talked a lot about how we can make it better. One function is the one described above. Another is the menu at the very top. I have replaced it with a more advanced one, which I think makes things a bit clearer. More work is needed on it and we are doing that. We will try to reduce the number of categories, so that more products are on each page (they should of course still be of the same type). That should mean you don't miss a lot of products we have. Bring manufacturers forward instead, as you may know who it is but not what the product is called/where it is. Work more with filters, for example block plane + Veritas and you see all the block planes from them. The search function (at the very top) is also slightly changed; it now only searches products (name, model and description) and that makes it much faster. It still searches in all three languages at once, so you can write block plane or stöthyvel and see results. The "Support/Contact us" function can also be found there, and you have been very good at using it! Many thanks for that. Unfortunately we haven't quite managed to answer within a reasonable time all the time, but we are working on that too. A little reminder: please reply via the link in the email you get when you send a question and receive an answer. If you reply directly via the email it ends up as before in the mailing list and easily gets lost. And if you want to attach pictures, you first have to send once, and then you can go in again and attach pictures. There is a technical reason why it has to be done that way.
As this is written, a pallet has just been picked up from LeeValley and is on its way to us. It should land late next week, or early the week after. It is a proper pile that is coming, with, among other things, various planes. For example the finger planes above that have been out of stock for a while. The #5 1/4 is also coming plus about ten more. I will start updating the shop over the weekend and, as usual, we release the products when we know it has landed in Europe, for delivery a few days later. Much of what is coming is already in stock and is a restock so that it won't run out in the next 2-3 months. We now hope we will soon be able to have the whole Veritas range in stock, which should last about 3 months, with a refill coming as needed. There is surely something I have missed, but it will have to come next time. Next Saturday (25/3) there is Saturday opening again, 10-14.
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