• Hi all and welcome to TheWoodHaven2 brought into the 21st Century, kicking and screaming! We all have Alasdair to thank for the vast bulk of the heavy lifting to get us here, no more so than me because he's taken away a huge burden of responsibility from my shoulders and brought us to this new shiny home, with all your previous content (hopefully) still intact! Please peruse and feed back. There is still plenty to do, like changing the colour scheme, adding the banner graphic, tweaking the odd setting here and there so I have added a new thread in the 'Technical Issues, Bugs and Feature Requests' forum for you to add any issues you find, any missing settings or just anything you'd like to see added/removed from the feature set that Xenforo offers. We will get to everything over the coming weeks so please be patient, but add anything at all to the thread I mention above and we promise to get to them over the next few days/weeks/months. In the meantime, please enjoy!

Hello!

G

Graham Haydon

Seedling
Joined
Jul 25, 2014
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Location
Devon
Nice to see this back again, seems like the same bunch which is cool. Thanks to those who made time to bring this back from the dead. Looking forward to seeing WH2 doing well.

Regards

Graham :D
 
Cheers chaps

TTK, that was a fun way to cut my teeth. I have more recently tried to do more youtubery which can be found here https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJtvqQ ... N6dlbXU0mw . The vids for my bench build are still about but I removed the listing as most were a bit crude :oops: . Hope some of the content comes back. Paul's projects, along with many others, were always a big draw for me.
 
Just a very brief message from me to say hello. I wish you well with the new forum.

In bocca al lupo!
 
Andyp":5ad8ac0q said:
And welcome to Peter too. Are you an ex-pat or a real Italian?
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Interesting distinction :)

I don't see myself as an "expat" at all, as I live with my (Italian) wife exactly where I want to live, with no hankerings to "return" to anywhere else. The differences between Italy and the UK are far less than you might think, with only the brand names (not, note, the manufacturers) being different in 'our' line of work. I still buy some things from the UK from time to time, but Germany holds far more interest for small tools and tooling, with larger items from local manufacturers here in Italy - still actually being manufactured here, in fact.
 
Peter Gee":iw0ycam1 said:
Andyp":iw0ycam1 said:
And welcome to Peter too. Are you an ex-pat or a real Italian?
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Interesting distinction :)

I don't see myself as an "expat" at all, as I live with my (Italian) wife exactly where I want to live, with no hankerings to "return" to anywhere else. The differences between Italy and the UK are far less than you might think, with only the brand names (not, note, the manufacturers) being different in 'our' line of work. I still buy some things from the UK from time to time, but Germany holds far more interest for small tools and tooling, with larger items from local manufacturers here in Italy - still actually being manufactured here, in fact.
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I agree with your sentiments for the word "expat" and I too married a locally and see no need to return.

What about the cost of woodie items in Italy and mail order? Here in France I find just about everything 20-30% more expensive and sometimes even hard to source. Buying secondhand equipment is also near impossible as ebay/leboncoin etc seem to have just large lumps of cast iron or tat.
 
Andyp":2772u291 said:
What about the cost of woodie items in Italy and mail order? Here in France I find just about everything 20-30% more expensive and sometimes even hard to source. Buying secondhand equipment is also near impossible as ebay/leboncoin etc seem to have just large lumps of cast iron or tat.
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Yes, there are differences in the trading methodology, just as between the USA and the UK. Probably the main difference is that there is a very small DIY sector here (and in France too), so the second hand market is very much either for "collectors" or for artisans, so the 'gadget' market really doesn't exist here as it does in the UK (or USA come to that). So, if you want a 3mt slider or toupie, you can find them easily enough - at a price, of course. If you are looking for a DIY machine, you will have to either go cheap Chinese at Leroy Merlin or any of the Brico stores, or find the more specialised suppliers for Mafell or Festool equipment. I have to admit that prices in France do seem to be rather above average though, so just buy from the German suppliers, as I do. As you will be told often enough, I'm sure, German traders are, in my experience, very efficient and extremely customer aware, so Schmid, Dictum, Sauter, etc are waiting your business!

If you are struggling to find what you want, Google images is a real help - just do an image search and then work through the links till you nail down the search words in your local language - which are often quite different to the dictionary translations!
 
Oh I haven't Rob, don't worry. But a young skinflint likes me wants "free" P&P so orders have to coincide with a trip back to the UK. Currently waiting to find out if an out of stock item can be shifted from the Axi store (available for click and collect) to the mail order depot which I assume is quite close.
 
Hello Graham, nice to see you here.
What part of Devon are you in? I did my Art Diploma at Plymouth back in 1995/6, and made a lot of friends in Plymouth, Tavistock, Sidmouth, Totnes, Ashburton, Buckfastleigh, and Exeter (used to love going to the Double Locks Inn). Got many a lovely memory from back then, especially up on Dartmoor.

E ciao Peter! Are you anywhere near Sicily? I love watching Inspector Montalbano, It's currently on BBC4 on saturdays 9pm. They're showing all the episodes from the start (were upto episode 5/10 of series 1). It's like Bergerac, but so much more sexier! ;) Those women! :shock:

Cheers/salute!
fred
 
We love Monty too - watched them all before but now watching them again. If you google the show they were filmed over many years so it's interesting to see the actors getting older. Also his girlfriends voice is dubbed for some strange reason?
We were booked to go to Sicily in June but had to cancel :(

Rod
 
We love Monty too - watched them all before but now watching them again
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Me too mate! Easy to watch again. I find them quite capitvating - the scenery, the characters, the story, the ladies! I would love to go to Sicily too, especially Ibla, Ragusa in Val di Noto, where it's filmed. It's a Unesco World Heritage site. There's a Montalbano tour you can take and visit all those places you see in the films: http://www.sicilytourguides.net/Montalb ... s-tour.htm

Hope you get to go to Sicily again Rod.

Have you seen the Young Montalbano series as well?

Ciao,
fred
 
We watch most of the foreign series!
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Please let me know what they are! I'm only familar with Montalbano. Are there any others in the same vein?

Cheers
fred

PS Sorry Graham for hijacking your hello!
 
Series last year on Bbc4 "Inspector Da Luca" sure to be repeated.
Set in and around Bologna during the tumultuous years of Mussolini’s dictatorship, the series follows Inspector Da Luca, an uncompromising man whose love of women lands him in trouble.
A bit more serious than Montalbano but quite interesting with a more historical slant?
Then there's The Killing, The Bridge, Borgen, Wallander, Spiral etc etc

Rod
 
an uncompromising man whose love of women lands him in trouble.
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So unlike an Italian man....

I've seen some of the Wallander series, both the original Swedish and english versions. Very dark, profound and brooding. Good stuff. I'll make a note of the others and check them out. Thanks Rod.

cheers
fred
 
Hi Fred

I'm in the North Devon area, South Molton to be accurate. Devon is a nice place to be. I struggle with busy places. Living a quite life makes me very happy :)
 
South Molton in North Devon? Potentially confusing that! Does that mean there's a North Molton in South Devon?! :? ;)

I know what you mean by living the quiet life, especially after living in London for 12 years. It's a lot quieter and slower paced back here in Jersey, but not quiet enough. Far too many people on this little rock. Every year or so I go to Sark, an even smaller rock that's north of here, that doesn't have any cars or motorbikes; just horses, bicycles and a couple of tractors (one of the tractors is the ambulance). No tarmac, just dirt tracks. No street lighting either. It's fantastic at night, you can see all the stars. Well worth a visit if you haven't been.

I'm hoping to retire to France when the time comes, a small rural hamlet in the middle of nowhere. Nice and quiet. Except for when I fire up the band saw, table saw, router, planer, sander etc. :) :lol:

Cheers
fred
 
I haven't been back to Jersey since the late 80s we used to have a great lads weekend on the Weymouth - St Helier ferry, stock up duty frees and laze around on the beech all day.

Must get back there soon as the crossing from Normandy is a lot shorter
 
I haven't been back to Jersey since the late 80s
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You'll be familar with Bergerac then Andy. A lot has changed since then. You can dance on a Sunday now!
If you ever come back, let me know.

laze around on the beech all day.
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Typical woodworkers typo! Always got wood on the mind. :lol:

cheers
fred
 
Re ex-pat or not, yes, like Andy and Peter, I'm here for the duration, living with a french lady, often go several weeks without speaking english at all. However, for the reasons that have been outlined, a lot of what I buy comes from outside France. Shame, but there it is...

Graham - sorry to have hijacked your topic ! Glad to see you here.
 
David, don't worry about it, it works both ways. Over here in Jersey, because we are an English island so close to France, we get alot of french coming over on shopping trips - they love BHS and buy Dulux and Johnstones paint by the gallons from local trade paint shops (who open just in the morning for them), and a lot of us go to France and buy gallons of wine and cart fulls of cheese. We are better at some things and they are better at others. It's a fair trade off!

And sorrry Graham. Hope you're enjoying this!

Bon weekend,
fred
 
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