Hello all,

I have been busy at the workshop over the last few months on workflow improvements; this meant I had less time to actually make products, but I’m in a better place for future projects. I don’t have a huge amount of time in the workshop, so want to make the most of it while there, so any efficiencies make a big difference.

The first project was a completely new process for making nunchaku. My previous approach required use of the planar, which sometimes resulted in grain tear out, damaging an otherwise beautiful piece of timber, (and less often damage to my fingertips!).

A challenge in making a tapered nunchaku is – how many machine operations (cut, planing, drilling, routing etc) is required to produce a finished item. Going from a rough oak board straight from the lumber yard, the old process for a single tapered nunchaku required THIRTY TWO operations to produce a single tapered octagon – and a set of nunchaku requires double that.

My new process has reduced this by exactly half to sixteen operations, which is about as few as possible, considering the 8 sides, 5 holes and 2 channels string channels. I’m pretty happy with that!

I’ve been aware for some time now that my website can be frustrating to browse – having most items ‘out of stock’ made it difficult to find the things that I did have available. I have now added an ‘in stock’ filter to the site so you can quickly see which products are available… I’m now working through my stocks to make sure this is all accurate.