This Saturday! Shelter's Tool-a-Palooza Holiday Sale

This Saturday! 

December 10, 2011 9:00-3:00

Join Us for Our Annual

Open House and Sale

Still trying to decide if you're coming to Shelter this weekend for our Tool-A-Palooza? Here's a preview of some of what you'll see:

• Watch the Shelter Design Build crew assemble a timber frame entry. 
• Local carver Ed Beech will give a wood carving demonstration.
• Ken Hatridge of Tree Trunk Design will offer a wood turning demonstration. Read more about Ken on our blog. 
• Free Tormek sharpening demonstrations. (Try it and buy it on sale!)
• Sun-Mar, our composting toilet vendor, will be on hand to discuss composting and their great composting products. Read more about Sun-Mar on our blog. 
• A representative from Vermont Castings can answer your questions about our full line of high-quality woodstoves. Read more about woodstoves and woodstove gift ideas on the Shelter Build blog. 
• Christy Hemenway of Gold Star Honeybees will be showing her bee hives and discussing an upcoming bee-keeping classes.
• Ben Tipton of Simple Living will be discussing his upcoming workshop on downsizing and simplifying your lifestyle and more.
• Design author Carol Bass will here to sign books and offer free 15-minute design consultations (first come first served).

Here's more of what you'll find at Shelter's Tool-A-Palooza:

• 20% off in-stock items
• Sidewalk Sale with deep discounts on overstock items as much as 60% off
• Free refreshments
• Door prizes
• Demonstrations and show room with displays

As always we'll offer free beverages, treats, and door prizes! Admission is free.

If you cannot make it to the sale, it is available at Shelter Tools online—Saturday only. 

If you saw it in the store and can't find it online, we will accept phone orders during the sale hours on Saturday, 9-3 Eastern. 

Sidewalk items available in person only. The discount does not apply to timber frames or class tuition.

Rebate Available for Flexcut Carving Tools

Flexcut, our supplier of fine carving tools, is offering two levels of rebates on all of their tools. The first rebate offers $5 cash back when you buy $50 in Flexcut products. Download the $5 rebate form here (PDF). The second rebate offers $10 cash back when you buy $100 in Flexcut products. Download the $10 rebate form here (PDF).

We carry an extensive collection of Flexcut tools at the Shelter Store. Their palm tools are excellent, and we carry the tools in sets or individually.

On our website, you can purchase the Skew Gouge Palm Set. The set comes with a shallow curve, deeper curve, left-skew, and right-skew gouge. Carving will never be the same with these four palm gouges. Reach into the inner right curves and the inner left curves to create symmetrical patterns and designs.

These gouges are sharp—so sharp that FlexCut includes a box of Bandaids with each set as a gentle reminder to be careful!

The rebate is valid until July 2012. If you've made a recent purchase of a Flexcut tool, it will probably apply.

The Flexcut website also has some handy diagrams that show how to sharpen these tools. As mentioned above, they come really sharp from the factory, but once you use a really sharp tool (and notice the difference), you'll want to keep that edge maintained.

If you're new to carving, we sell a great two-part workbook on decoy carving, Decorative Decoy Carver's Portfolio (Series One and Series Two).

Low VOC Waterborne Urethane Finish

H. Behlen Waterborne
Urethane Finish

By Rebecca, Shelter Tools Staff
Shelter is lucky to have many thoughtful and engaged customers. They know what they like and what they don’t like. Best of all, they are great at sending us their reviews, so we can pass their thoughts on to others. One such customer from the Virgin Islands recently called us, gushing about the Behlen’s Waterborne Urethane Finish we carry. She couldn’t say enough good things about the stuff—that it was ”really easy to use,” low on VOCs (Volatile Organic Compounds), environmentally-friendly, dried quickly, and created a harder, more durable finish than other finishes she had used.

Read more »

Friends of Shelter Tools - Tree Trunk Design

Exquisite turned bowl by
Ken Hatridge of Tree Trunk Design

The collection of new and gleaming tools in our store is impressive. Holding a brand-new Lie-Nielsen block plane in your hand, you see it both as a tool with great potential and as a thing of man-made beauty. But a tool is meant to be used, and some of the tools purchased at Shelter are in the hands of skilled master woodworkers who produce a variety of heirloom-quality work.

Ken Hatridge, a former timberwright at Shelter, is the talented proprietor of Tree Trunk Design, maker of fine wood-turned products. (The photos included here are examples of his work.) I contacted Ken to ask him about his process and wood turning.

Read more »

Friends of Shelter Tools - Margonelli Fine Furniture

A thing of beauty is a joy for ever.
- from "Endymion" by John Keats

The collection of new and gleaming tools in our store is impressive. Hold a brand-new Lie-Nielsen block plane in your hand, and you see it both as a tool with great potential and as a thing of man-made beauty. But a tool is meant to be used, and many of the tools purchased at Shelter are in the hands of talented woodworkers who produce a variety of heirloom-quality work.

David Margonelli began making furniture on his farm in Dover-Foxcroft, Maine in 1971, and he now operates Margonelli Fine Furniture, a three-person shop in Edgecomb, Maine.

The Margonelli website describes the serpentine bench (pictured at right):

The flexure furniture idea was conceived in 1994 when commissioned to build a bench on which to sit and hold a drink. Out of this need to combine seat and surface came two small curved tables that would fit together as one; one with a cushion, one with a glass top. Over the years, while working with this concept other pieces were designed; a dining table that could seat as few as two or as many as ten, chairs designed to serve as individual seating or when combined can become a bench. Three years ago these ideas formalized into a line of furniture that would be extremely functional and accommodate open format and smaller spaces with fluid lines and figured woods.

Take a look at the beautiful pieces David and his team have conceived on the flexure theme. Contact them, or, even better, visit their showroom in Edgecomb, Maine, Monday through Saturday, 10-5.

From time to time, we'll feature more Friends of Shelter Tools here on the blog. It's our small way of saying thanks for sharing with us your quality work and being a patron of Shelter.