Newbie wanting Help finding japanese tool supplier in australia

Gidday, could anyone help me find some australian suppliers of japanese handtools. I'm interested in buying a kebiki (japanese marking guage) and handsaws. any advise tips and places to check out would be appreciated...................thx

There are several places that sell Japanese saws in Australia. Carbatec with branches in most states sell them as do Timbecon in WA. Here is the URL for Timbecon. Sadly Carbatec's website doesn't have the saws on them however they do sell them.


Grunt

I was unable to obtain a mortice japanese marking guage at Carba-tec. This one clamps with a screw lock. They now only stock the wedged marking guage.

Regards from Perth

Derek

Thanks for that fellas have spent the last hour browsing the sites you recommended :-) i'll let you know how I get on.........................

Vic Carbatec have the full range of Japanes tools on the site.

Carbatecvic Jap tools

Dan

P.S. Postage to Wagga from Melbourne should not be much different than Sydney.

After a lot of looking about at suggested sites and browsing the net I've finally found something that caught my eye.................what do you guys reckon?? only thing is I think it will cost just as much to have it shipped over here :-(


http://www.japanwoodworker.com/produ...&dept_id=12157

Newlou

That is the very marking gauge I was looking for early this year. Tried Carba-tec, to no avail (although they did have one in their catalogue). They checked for supplies elsewhere, but no dice. So I looked at alternatives (as well as reviews of similar gauges).

Two options locally: the first is that you can get a similar gauge (that is, it uses a knife rather than a pin to score lines - which is better when marking across the grain), one made by Crown. OK, it is not a Japanese marking gauge but it is essentially the same design. The second choice is the path I finally took. That is to buy the Veritas wheel marking gauge. http://www.leevalley.com/wood/page.a...tegory=1,42936
This cuts a clean line across the grain, and is easily used one-handed. This is fantastic value-for-money. A much higher quality version (at several times the price) is the Tite Mark. http://www.lie-nielsen.com/tool.html?id=mark which is available form Mik International or Lie-Nielsen.

Having said all that, I am still taken by the Japanese marking gauges and, should I come up with a decent rationalisation (especially if I find a local supplier), will buy one. Marking gauges are like clamps - you can't have too many!

Regards from Perth

Derek

Well kept looking about the net and various aussie suppliers. Eventually got my hands on the latest 2004 carba-tec catalogue n there she was page 74 traditional japanese marking guage CAT 1275-001.

At $29.00 (Australian) & a couple a bucks postage and handling I cant go wrong...........................thx everyone for your advise and help

One happy camper :-)

Now I just gotta decide which one I want ......................... Arrrrrrrrr the joys a buying tools!!!!

Newlou,

This is probably not of much use to you now that you've found a local supplier but, for what it's worth, I bought some planes from Japan Woodworker in the US about 6 months ago. I got good, quick service and would use them again.

Cheers,
John

Well fellas its been a while down the track. I ended up getting some dozuki z saws. 1 for cross cutting & light ripping (Very short spine) and one for fine joinery (Dovetails etc) which has a spine along the blade. I compared a number of different saws like a traditional dovetail saw (Jack) A fatmax crosscut/rip saw (Stanley) and a Tenon saw (Stanley) None of them stack up against the Japanese pull saws. The wood I tested them on was some really dense & hard blackbutt 45mm thick. At the end of the day i'm one happy camper in regards to my purchase......................Now what to do about a marking guage?? :-)