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Berlin desk pen

PensWoodturningWoodworking

So, in order to procrastinate before starting the fancy pens (and also because I was on-call this week so I didn’t have much shed time), I wanted to try out a new pen kit. See, brexit (that gift that keeps on taking away) has started driving up prices for UK based vendors and I don’t really see there being a lot of potential for that to stop anytime soon. There are a lot of good UK pen kit vendors and retailers but if I have to pay an extra 20-30% on top of the price tag for customs, duty, handling fees and so on, well, there are a lot of good French and German and Dutch vendors and retailers as well, so I’ve been looking at a few.

The IAP have a nice list of vendors from all over the place, and I basically started going through each of those on the continent and looking at websites for something to jump out.… Read the rest

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Sunbathing poplar

DesignShelvesStringing
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ToolsWoodworking

So asking on UKworkshop about that clamping problem I was thinking about with the shelf/desk project led to the conclusion that housing joints won’t work and tapered sliding dovetail joints are the better choice. That will probably mean some router work because of the precision needed – I could probably make a tapered dovetail joint that wouldn’t pull out, but one that would be precise enough to maintain the shelves against racking would be beyond me. So a new router bit, get that router table out of storage and actually assemble it (I basically picked it up in Lidl intending to use parts of it in a proper router table at some point and then just developed a dislike for routers in general 😀 ), and that sorts two of the shelves out; the third gets dovetailed into the top shelf which will also help with racking.… Read the rest

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Mark Dennehy in 2 Comments

Ending, restocking, brexit and black friday

Baby blanket chestBandsaw BoxesFinishing
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ShedToolsWoodworking

Looooong day. I had a callout over the weekend at midnight on Saturday so I had a few hours off in lieu that I took this morning to go to the timber yard. One of the next projects coming up could use some 8/4 oak so my shopping list was a 6-8″ board of 8/4 oak between 8′ and 12′, an 8-9″ board of 4/4 oak around the 12′ mark, and possibly the same two boards again in walnut. And I thought I’d take a look at the beech and get a small board of that to try working in it.

You know how plans rarely survive contact with reality?

So, Brexit. And now any timberyard here in Ireland has a choice – either get hardwoods direct from the continent via ship which is more expensive than road haulage; or buy it from the continent and drive it back home through the UK with all the customs hassle on both coasts which is expensive; or do what they’ve done till now and buy smaller quantities from UK timberyards and ship it back on the ferry to here, but now paying higher prices because the pound has collapsed, and next year, paying higher prices again because the UK is having to pay customs duties of 20% or more on their imports from the EU (because the UK does not grow enough timber for itself and hasn’t since the 18th century), and then paying higher prices again because of customs duties re-importing that timber back here.… Read the rest

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Mark Dennehy in 2 Comments