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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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Mark Dennehy in No Comments

Snowman platoon

ToolsWoodturningWoodworking

So along with the Gnomes, I wanted to do a batch job of something for solstice gifts from the lathe, and while I initially thought trees or baubles, it came down to snowmen in the end. So, first off, ordered a few sycamore spindle blanks from the Carpentry Store.

At that time, and at the moment, they’re one of the most economical (ie. I was being cheap) sources, but only for spindles. I mention this because we’re now two days from Brexit kicking in across the water in the UK, and already the costs of importing blanks from my normal source at HomeOfWood.co.uk has jumped (though not as much as it has for his continental customers). It’s a very small complaint compared to what’s coming, but the woodworking hobbists here in Ireland may be facing into having to find either local suppliers or continental ones, so costs may be rising right as we face into the damage done by the covid pandemic to our economies.… Read the rest

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Mark Dennehy in 4 Comments