For you new folks out there, this is Stu, chief cook and bottle washer at Tools from Japan.com. Well, that’s strictly true, since we only have one cook and one bottle washer, and an occasional cleaning lady who comes in and helps out.
Just wanted to say hello, and to let you out there who are new (and there are plenty of you out there) that there is a real, live human being who speaks English on the other end, and one who actually uses the tools he sells.
The good news.
It would seem that this little store is on the cusp (if not already past) the point of critical mass. Previously (as in 2 weeks ago) the store got regular visits and orders at a easily managed rate. Within the past 2 weeks, there has been a massive spike in visits and orders, and with it questions.
This is actually great news, but I have downgraded it to good because it means that instead of things being quite manageable, it’s become nearly unmanageable. I am doing ok for now, but wow, it’s been crazy. If it takes a little time for me to get back to you about things, please understand that I have not forgotten you, it’s just that time is short for me right now. I will have more time come April, but for the next 3 weeks it’s going to be difficult.
I will, as always, try to ensure that everything is dealt with in a timely manner, but the definition of ‘timely’ may be stretched at times.
For this, I thank you all. I don’t openly advertise this store, so all this new activity is from you out there spreading the word.
The great news.
There are some new products coming on line soon. Specifically, some chisels.
These chisels are not the best chisels in the world. They are not the cheapest or most expensive chisels in the world. They are in all honesty, middle of the road. Not bad, but not amazing.
The important point is that when it comes to ‘bang for the buck’, these new to the TFJ store chisels are, in my opinion, impossible to beat. Not just very good, not just amazing value, impossible to beat for the same price (and a little more) and unbeatable for a cheaper price.
They are known as ‘Senkichi’ brand standard Oire-nomi. There are several chisels with the Senkichi brand, and these are the basic, white steel, single back hollow with plain, hooped red oak handle models.
These chisel also have a special place in my heart as they were the very first Japanese chisels I owned after arriving in Japan. I have since used many Japanese and Western chisels of both superior and inferior performance, and they are the chisels against which I compare performance and value for money.
Some chisels perform better, but you pay for that improvement. Some are considerably less expensive (but too much) but they do not perform as well. These Senkichi chisels have performance in spades, for not very much money.
And finally, after all this time (nearly a year!), I am able to offer them for sale. These are one of the tools that prompted the store’s existence, and my only regret is that I could not offer them earlier.
Individually, they are keenly priced.
As a set, you will have to wait until they are online to find out what I am doing with them, but simply put, if you are in the market for a set of ten chisels and your budget is tight, you won’t have any other choice, from anywhere.
I am excited, but will wait until I am on top of things until I offer them up to you all.
The not good at all news…
We, as in myself and my family are in difficult times. If you read the link at the top of the page there “Message from Stu” you can read the details, and I only want to make sure that if for some reason I am unresponsive, that is most likely the reason why. I will push on, as I am sure that is what I should do and is best for everyone here, but it’s going to be difficult so please understand. I do not expect much interruption, but there will be periods where I will simply be unavailable.
Please be patient, I’ll get to things just as fast as I can.
That’s about all for now I guess, so I’ll go and keep doing what I need to do as quickly as possible.
Currently, there are no new products as of this week, no new features, nothing new at all!
I have discovered that just arranging orders to head out the door, answering questions, sending out correspondence and all the other things can consume quite a large chunk of time. I don’t mind doing it, but it does mean that some items do not receive the attention they deserve.
Sorry.
There are a few small tweaks here and there, but nothing significant really.
However, some ‘new’ stuff comes in tomorrow, and once I get a good look at these ‘new’ things, then they may just end up in the store.
You thought that just anything could earn a place here?
No. Not at all.
Every single thing listed has to fit certain criteria, otherwise it won’t find a place.
Essentially, they have to represent good value for money, one way or another.
By being ‘decent’ and very inexpensive, that works. Being a solid performer and priced well, of course. By being mind blowingly brilliant without a price reflecting how good it is, oh yeah!
By being mediocre with price tag above it’s station, no way.
There are more than a few things here that I cannot in good conscience sell because they just don’t match up.
Bad enough when it’s a small item, but when the price tag looks more like a telephone number… Do I need to elaborate?
So while the ‘new’ stuff takes time to be listed, you might have a better idea of why it takes so long.
Have a good weekend all, and some real news should be ready, real soon.
This humble little store now has just over 600 tools listed. Maybe not a big event for you, faithful reader, but big enough for me to mention it. The 600th product is one that is sure to garner a lot of attention because…
These things have an impressive reputation and some impressive features. To start, they are impressive to look at being 11mm thick, 10mm of them being a solid aluminium base pate, the other 1mm being an diamond and electroplated steel sheet. The fact that there is a ‘base plate’ and a ‘diamond sheet’ might give you the idea that maybe they can be separated, and you would be correct. When the diamonds wear out, you can remove the steel sheet and install a new one with the supplied double sided tape. For that matter, you can also add a steel sheet to the bottom of an Atoma diamond plate and get one good, flat working surface and another for work that does not require the surface to be so flat (because the back of the plate is not milled flat, but it may be sufficiently flat for most work).
These are available in parts (rubber base, aluminium base plate and diamond sheet), as a complete plate with a base and as a plate without a base to fit nearly any situation.
Be warned, they are not exactly inexpensive. But they are impressively good, which is why they are highly regarded. But while we are talking about monetary concerns, they are not the most expensive diamond plate listed…
Only available in #1000, #3000 and #6000 grit, these plates are in a class all their own.
The big difference is that the diamonds are not held in place with the more common, less expensive electroplated method, the diamonds are sintered to the steel by heat and pressure, making them much less likely to become dislodged so the plate will continue to work long after an electroplated plate has been ‘worn out’.
They will also stand up to much greater pressure while working blades on them, which makes the work go faster.
Not really suitable for flattening water stones as they are all far too fine, but for working blades, these are difficult to beat.
As always, more products are being added all the time so do not be afraid to check back often to see what is new.
Thanks for reading, and if you have any questions please do not hesitate to contact us.
Just a quick note to mention that there are two new saws in the store.
Namely, one made by a company called Nokogiri-kobo who make their saws with attention to quality and detail and largely, all by hand. Mass produced they are not, but moderately priced they most certainly are.
From them, we have what is called a ‘Kireru’ saw which is a combination cross cut and rip cut saw made by combining a full cross cut blade with rip filed ‘raker’ teeth to help keep the kerf clear.
These saws are designed specifically for cutting joinery and will cut rip, cross and diagonal cuts cleanly and relatively efficiently.
Added to these, the first of several Mitsukawa saws have been put up, namely the ‘Hat Trick’.
What makes the HatTrick different from the Nokogiri-koba ‘Kireru’?
Not very much!
The Hat Trick is a joinery saw designed to perform cross, rip and diagonal (yoko, tate and naname in Japanese) cuts cleanly, hence the name being a ‘3 tricks in one’ kinda saw.
Mitsukawa are very well known in and out of Japan for their high quality saws, as well as their more pedestrian production saws.
More saws from Mitsukawa and Nokogiri-kobo will be added in the future.
The checkout addition is the choice of including insurance to your order or having the order ‘registered’.
If you choose this option during checkout, you will be contacted with details about what will happen.
Basically, our most popular shipping method, Small packet/SAL cannot be insured, but can be registered. All that means is the package is tracked through the Postal Service to make sure it arrives where it is supposed to go. Included is 6000 yen of non-delivery compensation.
True insurance is only available on SAL, Surface and Airmail shipments as they are deemed to be parcels, not letter mail as Small packets are.
In the case of insurance, the full value of the contents are covered for non-delivery AND damage.
The problem is that the module for the store cannot be adjusted to the suit the rates offered by the Post Office, so we will need to adjust the final cost by hand.
Nothing much to report at the moment, just enough to make the RSS thingys do a loop.
There have been quite a few additions to the marking section, specifically inks, line and wadding as well as a few more support items for ink lines in both modern and traditional forms.
(We have been cursed with some long illnesses around here lately, nothing serious but they just keep on coming, hence the lack of activity…)
As always we are constantly adding new items (last count 550+!) and will post occasional updates here as we can.
While I have your attention, I hope that your holiday season (whichever variety you celebrate, Christmas for us here) was a good one and that your new year (big in Japan) is safe, enjoyable and fruitful.
I’d like to point your attention to the bargain bin.
Like the title of the bloglet says, some things in there are almost free. Yes, you will have to pay shipping and cover the costs of international money transfers, but I make only enough money to buy a tissue. A used one at that.
I’ll even sweeten the deal, on the spur of the moment and only available if you do, in fact, read this blog post.
In the comments field of the cart put the message of “Please send me a free file” and I will.
This offer is strictly limited to 4 (four) files total (because these things cost money, and make sure I lose money in the deal!) and one for either of the handmade saws, one for one of the ‘nearly free’ saws and one of two files for the very large anahiki saws.
I just want them to go away.
The King #1000 grit stones in there cost ¥1280 to ship, plus boxing, plus transfer fees. It means that I collect the grand sum of ¥500 yen for the stones themselves, and they are not available anywhere at that price today. Maybe 30 years ago…
There it is. I can’t make this stuff any cheaper without throwing out into the street and someone walking by and picking it up.
Just a quick update about what is going on here right now, which is honestly, not too much.
In the store itself, I have disabled a shipping option. The ‘Surface mail/Small Packet’ shipping option, being the lowest cost shipping option was always going to be a popular way to have your tools sent to you, and when we first started, it was a viable option too with the post office quoting 4-6 weeks to most places in the world.
In the past few months, the post office has revised it’s delivery schedule, and the 4-6 weeks magically doubled to 8-12 weeks, which is far too long.
There is still a surface shipping method available, but it’s really only for special cases where an order/item can’t be broken up into smaller more easily managed/shipped chunks that travel for less via economy air.
So slow ship/small box is gone, don’t expect it to come back again.
On the shipping front, I am still tweaking the system to offer more accurate shipping estimates. It’s getting better, but it still only gets it right half the time. 1/3 of the time it overcharges (and of course we refund the extra shipping charge!) and the rest of the time it undercharges and we need to cover the difference. While the errors are small, they are annoying so I am still trying to get it ‘just right’.
In the real world, the little computer I use to manage the store is wounded, and I inflicted the injury. Not a software problem of course, but a physical problem.
The fan was noisy, I decided to oil it and in the process, I somehow broke the fan. This particular kind of computer reacts badly to a broken fan, so it’s a problem that I need to fix. The poor thing is too old to send in for repair, and besides I can’t be without it for that long. Trying to get a replacement sent from China (!) but that’s as simple as it should be either.
(Giving serious though to getting an ancient old laptop as a backup machine right now…)
So right now I have a small fan cobbled up to blow air through the computer, and the silly part is that it seems to be working better than the ‘proper’ fan does. Not even going to try working that one out.
For now, no new products. I think the newer than new Razorsaw should be enough for right now. In the coming weeks, there will be some new items for you all to look at, some decidedly unconventionally Japanese but useful all the same.
And just one week to Christmas!
Ack!
I better get busy. Not that I am not already busy, but busier than I am right now, being busy.
There are a bunch of new items in the bargain bin as of the last few days, namely a revisit by some small carving chisels, a couple of waterstones, some really big saws and some smaller saws, all priced to run away really quickly.
The small carving chisels are a simple set of 5 with a small slip stone for sharpening. Nothing extravagant, but good quality and difficult to better.
Two King #1000 grit waterstones, with included shipping in the price. Again, nothing really special except that the marked price is all you need to put them on your doorstep. These stones form the backbone of many a sharpening setup, and will serve you a goodly amount of time. The only concession to them is that the packaging is unconventional and they are of course a little shop soiled.
The big saws, they are really REALLY big. Yes you can get bigger saws, but these things are as big as is reasonably usable by the average woodworker. Resharpenable and would normally be priced at 3-5 times what they are, right now. The bigger saws include shipping because they are too big to ship by our preferred, most economical shipping, so they get sent out via super fast EMS. Order one today, you should have it by next weekend!
A couple of small, useful saws for detail work best suited to softwoods and would be complimented by a sharpening file because they are also ideal candidates to cut your/their teeth in the art of Japanese saw filing.
A brace of simple, cheap and not exceptionally pretty saws. They can do good work, but would work better as educational tools, again in the art of learning to sharpen Japanese saws. If they don’t run away soon, I will have to do something silly to make them just go away…
Heck, the cost of the included shipping is the biggest cost of these things…
That’s it for now, the promised saws are finally up and ready to go out.
I am still in the process of tidying things up, so there may be some random strangeness as you look around.
Thanks for looking, and if you have any questions please don’t hesitate to contact us!
The bargain bin will get some saws in the next few days, as there may be some potentially educating items in there so if you want to have some Japanese saws to practise your sharpening upon, keep an eye on things in there.
Still busy tweaking what is currently available in the store, but new products will be added in the very near future.
