Buy what you need for less.

I love the US Thanksgiving holiday. I’ve plenty of American friends or friends who reside in the US and it’s hard not to get caught-up with all the excitement. I miss working for an American company who had a Turkey Thanksgiving dinner and festivities each year. But hey, while we don’t have the holiday in the UK we’ve still got Black Friday.

Whatever you think of this phenomenon, you can’t avoid the discounts in-store and online. The budget I have for my workshop is not limitless and for the last two years I have waited to see what price I can get much wanted tools for within the Black Friday sales. This year I wanted to focus on clamps, batteries and pull-saws for the workshop, and extending my security camera system for the home and workshop. But there was an emergency purchase and the timing with black Friday really did save the day.

So in a ‘postbag’ style review, here are the items I bagged this year:

Panasonic Lumix G7 Camera with 2 lenses | Jessops | £399 | Saving: £350

This was a stress purchase. For a number of years I’ve really enjoyed my Nikon 1 camera system and have invested in growing the number of lenses and filters. However on Black Friday itself I spent the day filming in the workshop only to realise later the image quality and image size was not right. An intermittent software issue where the camera randomly picks an image format when it connects to an external monitor now disrupts my workflow so much that it takes hours to film even simple videos. With that I’ve decided to switch systems and the camera of choice is the Panasonic Lumix G7.

Initial thoughts are positive. I love the manual control and the ability to customise the camera’s button functions to suit shooting video. The DSLR Video Shooter website has an absolutely fantastic G7 guide which gets you up-and-running in under 90 minutes (See link).

The camera has been around for 3 years now, but that’s fine. It still carries many features missing on new 4K cameras from the likes of Canon and (significantly) Nikon. It has some reported issues with auto-focus, in-lens stabilisation and audio, but nothing that will significantly impair my use. I want to use manual focus more and this wasn’t possible on the Nikon 1. Lens stabilisation makes camera panning look really glitch and I’ll turn that off when I need to. And audio quality really wasn’t as bad as all many reviewers have reported and anyway I’m trying to rely less on in-camera audio and use voiceover more.

You’ll be hearing a lot more about this camera soon.

Japanese Hand Saws (Set of 3) | Axminster Tools & Machinery | £39 | Saving: £33

To the observer, gaining a much bigger workshop would appear to have led to a significant investment in new power tools leading to a view that I’m a ‘power-tool’ joiner. Hand tool enthusiasts might despair. However, the truth is that I generally default to hand tools for much of the cutting and jointing operations.

All my hand tools are western style and this Black Friday sale has allowed me to try some Japanese style tools. The set includes:

A double-edged Ryoba saw for crosscutting and rip cuts.
Hassunme Cross-cut saw. This saw has a fine kerf and produces a really clean finish.
Dozuko-Me Tenon Saw. A substitute for my western tenon saw but will equally serve as a dovetail saw or gent saw substitute. Something I don’t have at moment.

180cm F-Clamps (Set of 5) | Axminster Tools & Machinery | £39 | Saving £30

You can never have too many clamps. It helps if you have many that are the same style and I’ve doubled my F-Clamp stock with this purchase, and you can’t fault Axminster Trade clamps.

Fisher SX & UX plug sets | Amazon.co.uk | £12 | Saving £15

Fischer fixings are just about all I use. The UX fixing in particular has been used all over the new house and I’m really pleased with their holding capacity and ease of fitting. Anyway, here was a chance to re-stock a much depleted parts box.

Ryobi 5A 18v Fast Charger | Amazon.co.uk | £29 | Saving £26

I am pretty much all-in with the Ryobi One + battery system and while I have two existing chargers, it takes around 4 – 6 hours to re-charge the higher capacity batteries. The fast charger now allows me to re-charge even the largest 5Ah battery in under 90 minutes and has improved my battery management in the workshop at a stroke.

Arlo Wire Free Camera | Amazon.co.uk | £69 | Saving £42

Ring Doorbell 2 | ring.com | £129 | Saving £90

Good security about the house and workshop is important to me. I have an existing Arlo camera system and wanted to extend my system to include a camera inside the workshop itself. Additionally, I wanted to have a smart doorbell so I can speak to delivery people while I’m at work and importantly direct them to the workshop if I’m home. Waiting for the sale allowed me to achieve all this at a seriously good discount. The Ring doorbell even came with an Echo Dot which was effectively free in the deal.

However having installed the doorbell, my local amazon delivery person prefers not to use it and instead following the old sign I’d left on the house letterbox.

In Summary:

The total savings this weekend were over £560 for things I would have bought anyway. Also I made sure I used affiliate links of my favourite makers when making purchases. And to be completely straight with you, all the links I’ve included are affiliate links where I receive a few pennies at no additional cost to you. And it goes without saying, the items linked are almost certainly not available at the prices I’ve described in this article.

For now. Cheerio.

Black Friday 2018 Round-up