It was almost 6 months since the last newsletter. A long time, unfortunately, as we have tried to send these regularly during the 5 years we have been writing them (I checked and we now have 77 newsletters on our blog, Ta i Trä). But it has been a tough winter and the energy and time to write any have been lacking; normally a newsletter takes 2-3 hours to write. The move to the new premises has also taken much more than we could have imagined, but now things are starting to settle, and I would say that everyone who has come by has said it is a big step up in every way from our old premises. We think that is fun to hear, and we are very happy here too. We don't have fixed opening hours yet, but on the website we write the times and how you can reach us if you want to come by and shop. Tomorrow the 26th we have, as usual, the last Saturday of the month, Saturday opening between 10-14. When Rubank Verktygs started in 2010, Johan had the idea of trying to have Swedish words and terms for all products that we sell; he dug deep into old books and catalogues to find what should be the correct names. We have continued with that, but it takes a great deal of time to translate a product text, and unfortunately translation services only help with perhaps 75% of a text. As we have a lot of technical terms, it is hard for them to translate. So you have to go through the translated texts several times to find the errors. They have become clearly better at doing the job, which is positive. Personally I am of a slightly different opinion; Swedish texts are nice, but I see it a bit more modern, perhaps: today woodworking revolves around the Anglo-Saxon world with the USA (North America) as its centre, and everything that is produced (products/texts/films) is written in English, and many use/search for these words, so translating doesn't feel as important to me. We have the shop in two languages, Swedish and English. Whichever language you are using, the search looks in both text files so you get hits in both languages. So search for what you want and you will probably see what you are looking for.
This became a bit more relevant now when JessEm sent their latest measuring tools. They have named them after different (English) sword names. Johan thought it would be fun if he could find the Swedish names. I think he has found 3 of the 4 so far. We will see whether we end up using them in the shop or not. JessEm came this week with a pallet so there are now lots of products at home again. JessEm
Another piece of news that was settled last week is that we are starting to sell SawStop. The first saws are on their way and we will set one of them up in the shop so you can come and try it. SawStop has been sold in North America for just over 20 years, but now they are available within the EU for the first time. We start with the two smaller saws + accessories, and the large cabinet saw will come in the autumn. SawStop were the first to have a function meant to prevent accidents when using a table saw. It senses the moisture in wood and when it goes above a certain value (such as skin) it triggers and stops the blade. This takes tenths of a second, so often you only get a small cut, if even that. But of course if you saw wood that is "wet", you have to bypass the control, which is done before sawing via the switch. We think this is very exciting and fun, and above all that there is a shop in Stockholm that can show it/deliver it so you don't have to buy it online. We will of course ship these too, but they are rather big/heavy so it will be pallet deliveries. Right now only the saws are listed, the ones coming in the first delivery; I will add the rest when the next delivery is on its way. SawStop
We have also got new items from Benchdogs UK. Benchdogs UK We restock regularly; they are very productive and come out with new products or updates to existing products very often, so we don't keep large stocks of the products, which means they can sell out quite quickly. What we got this time was a few different measuring tools and accessories for the MFT table.
Veritas has also been good at delivering during the winter/spring; a delivery is coming next week, to be updated over the weekend. In the previous delivery, which came a few weeks ago, we got quite a lot of new products and restocked what had run out. Before the last delivery is entered we now have 637 products at home in stock. In total we now have 721 of Veritas/Lee Valley's products listed. I am pretty sure it is the broadest range outside Canada. Veritas/Lee Valley
A product group we often get calls about is wooden plugs; we have had quite a lot from the start, but have now also got somewhat larger sizes. This also applies to drill bits in larger sizes, which fit, for example, the Veritas tenon cutter. They are currently in two different places; I will put these products in order so it is easier to get an overview. drills and drawboring and tenon and plug tools
We have written about our new premises on social media, but thought we would show a few pictures of how it looks "right now". It will surely be moved around a bit more once we have settled in more. But we think it works quite well as it is right now. We have a large area where you can work at several different planing benches and workbenches. We have quite a lot of demo tools out and have a large stock of lumber to work with. As in the old premises we have an area where we have our Woodworking Bookshop, where you can sit and read the books we sell as well as the books we have as reference literature; it is now about 170 books that we have gathered.
Hopefully the newsletters will come a bit more regularly now. See you in the next one.
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