[Closed] Artisanal tools for the discerning trail bimbler

If companies can make & sell stuff that people will buy then good luck to them.

Not a cat in hells chance of me buying that kind of overpriced shite though.

If it doubles as a hipster beard grooming paradigm I'm sold

can i just be first to say befoe anyone else does "your not their target market" and well there should at least be three pages concluding with a brexit mention on the third having gone through the whole buy british men in sheds are awesome thing

hmmmm https://www.diy.com/departments/outdoor-garden/garden-hand-tools-equipment/rakes-weeding-clearing/DIY780462.cat?icamp=GHT_C_GHT_GL_RW

I do wonder though, who is there target market? I, more often than not, built trails when I was younger, with less money. I certainly wouldn't have enough cash to piss away on these.

Waitwaitwait, time for a derail...

buy in large

un-derailded 😀

Glentress trailfaeries have loads.

I've used one of those BTR tools.
My local club bought two.

Its brilliant. Really weighty construction, makes short work of ragging up the dirt and then is nice and heavy for packing it down in place.
The holes are for locking it to trees.
Lovely solid, sturdy handle too.

Nothing built like that in the B&Q link above.

Having said all that, I wouldn't personally spend that on that particular tool, but then that's because I plan to make one like it on my welding course 🙂

If anyone wants one, £74.99 + £25 P&P
😉

I kind of get it though? A Mcloud is a single multipurpose tool and beats carting spade, rake and mattock around with you. How much does 3 halfway decent tools cost?

I'd love one, but they're right difficult to get in the UK for some reason.

BTR are a small company, making a very few of these by hand, there must easily be 2 or 3 hours labour in them by the time you've got the blade cut by another contractor and collected it, welded the spigot on, got the finish sorted, then there's the business overheads to allow for.

At that point £75 doesn't feel too much for a high quality tool, especially when you compare to getting one imported from the US (a few on ebay). The £25 postage is though. I won't be buying one as I don't have £100 to blow on an occasional use tool, and I tend to drive to trail building days, so having 3 tools isn't a big issue.

What it needs is someone to get a few thousand made in Taiwan and sell them for £25 each. It'd be a perfect On-one kinda product. Volunteers?

We have a few of those (Chopwell Trail Builders). Not sure what was paid for them, but they are very good and well put together.

Personally, I prefer billhooks, but I like ****ting trees.

What it needs is someone to get a few thousand made in Taiwan and sell them for £25 each.

I've made a few myself and dished them out to local trailbuilders for free. Materials to make cost a couple of quid.
They make trails that I then ride so it's a win all round. 🙂

If I was doing them nice, galvanised, with a wooden handle, then they would need to be quite pricy. £75 does seem a bit much nonetheless.

Maybe I should start selling my rough and ready ones on ebay...

Mate has one, it's a great tool. If I knew I could leave it at my local woods and it wouldn't get found/nicked I'd likely buy one also.

And with regards to the price, seems BTR are not alone in making similar tools:
https://www.pinkbike.com/news/raked-and-rated-6-mtb-trail-specific-sculpters-tools.html

I reckon an Italian Hoe takes some beating - good for bench cutting, cutting through roots and pretty much everything.
I brought mine back from Greece, where they're as cheap as chips.

Like this really - https://www.quickcrop.co.uk/product/chillington-heavy-duty-hoe

I don't like 'em personally, they're pretty light so I don't find them as useful as the macleods MC made for us, they always feel like jumped-up rakes rather than proper macleods. But I've no problem with the price.

I've got a Rogue Hoe myself, a Rhino I think, and it's bloody [i]fantastic[/i]. A bit expensive, sure, but it makes jobs easier, my time's the biggest expense when I'm digging, not the tool. We have a bunch of them for the trailfairies too and they're pretty much universally loved. It just lacks a straight edge for scraping but it can still do it reasonably well.

That Rogue stuff looks the dog's bollocks

[i]Exactly, thats's got to be the dream of every small-scale UK manufacturer who painstakingly develops & produces as high-quality product! [/i]

Except it depends what you're after. I wouldn't expect a £25 one to be near the quality of a £75 one, but it'll be fine for personal use a few times a year and it gets the "all in one tool" in people's minds.

Then when you realise you're breaking the cheap ones, you want club tools that are gonna get caned, or you've worked out more about exactly what you want out of a tool, it becomes easy to justify the expensive and/or bespoke version.

I reckon an Italian Hoe takes some beating

Then when you realise you're breaking the cheap ones

... because £100 is too.much for some people to afford?

That fact is lost on so many people on here. People get berated for buying cheap stuff and berated for buying stuff on credit.

I do wonder though, who is there target market

no idea.... seems to be the standard response these days when price is brought into question.

the b&q thing was a dig before someone else came out with you can buy a rake for a fiver 🙄

If not an artisan rake for £100, what about an artisan cnc coffee tamper for £50?

[img] [/img]

[url= https://www.superstarcomponents.com/en/coffee-tamper-headset-style.htm ]Headset coffee tamper[/url]

There must be a few on here that'd consider that a tool worth having. 🙂

[i]totes! why bother with locally made tools that'll last a lifetime when you can import cheap crap[/i]

Because it'll be good enough for 80% of users, just like an On-one or a Pinnicle or a Calibre is all the bike most people need.

And...
[i]... because £100 is too much for [s]some[/s] most people to afford?[/i]

Those who either NEED or WANT the high end stuff can get hold of it too.
(and chances are there will be more of them willing to pay high end prices if they've tried a "does the job but nothing more" version first.)

How much are your work tools?

How many people have brought a gaming PC to play zwift?

If you are a serious trail builder you want tools that do what you want.

If you are a serious trail builder you want tools that do what you want.

Yes. But whilst you might WANT them you might not be able to afford them. I resent the suggestion that anyone who doesn't have a £100 tool isn't 'serious'.

Bloody middle class goods inflation on this forum pisses me off sometimes. It's like the Times weekend supplement. Oh, you simply MUST have the really expensive stuff, how you could POSSIBLY do anything with that rubbish.

It's very dispiriting when that's all you can afford.

Lazer cut plate less than £10 steel tube £2 welding 10 mins max, coating £5 shank £8

total £25

Bit of profit in them

That fact is lost on so many people on here.

Not really.

There's cheap crap tools that break easily.

There's tools decent enough to use three times a year and not break, that you get from a garden centre

Then there's £100 tools like this. This is far above a decent minimum spend.

Cheap CNC plasma cutter, rotating table and a might welde to make it easier to weld, could quite easily automate the welding, throw a handle. You could produce loads in a day for relatively little captital outlay. Selling as many as you can make them is a different matter.

that's only £90 actually 😉

or £68.75 if you need 6 or more

I don't like them either, if I was restricted to a single tool it would be a chillington hoe. Anyway you can buy a good mattock, spade and chillington for less than that.

I had a chillington, and it was pretty useful but not a patch on the rhino. Donated it to the "secret" pumptrack at my work, hopefully they won't kill themselves when the head comes loose

Had a cheap silverline azada which worked really well too til the head fell off just after I'd spent 30 minutes hiking up to a trail. It may still be halfway up a scots pine at bonaly.

I wouldn't want to stash it behind a tree with pine needles for camouflage, but a good trail tool and more importantly the time to use it is worth more than £££.
I'd never buy one after losing and breaking some stuff building. I would hope these are pretty much unbreakable though and hope plenty are sold and put to good use.

My riding buddy who's a blacksmith might have made a template and have a follow jig for the plasma cutter......

I have no.1 BTR type tool in my shed. It's good.

But, even with that set up, by the time you get the head coated or galvanised, even in a bigger batch, you're into £50 a tool with labour.

Edit: mine was the prototype and used on 'our' trails so F.O.C. besides getting a handle 😀

But, even with that set up, by the time you get the head coated or galvanised, even in a bigger batch, you're into £50 a tool with labour.

Only if you are doing it one off. With some organisation you can get much less than £50 per unit labour and with fairly minimal investment, or more than likely with tools that many fabrication shops would own much less still

But I like dragging a mattock around, makes me feel like I'm in a b-movie and up against the odds.

Bloody middle class goods inflation on this forum pisses me off sometimes. It's like the Times weekend supplement. Oh, you simply MUST have the really expensive stuff, how you could POSSIBLY do anything with that rubbish.

Spot on.
I can ignore the free market idealogues, enjoy annoying the music snobs and love the eccentrics.
It's the overwhelming middle class smugness that puts me off.

If I found this place now I'd give it a cursory glance and move on.
It's turned into a place where people judge themselves and others solely by their possessions.

Inspirational and aspirational indeed.

RS - you see smugness, I see insecurity.

You could very well be right Colin.
🙂

You guys see snugness and insecurity, I see a marketing opportunity... nah, I couldn't sell a toaster to someone who likes bread but wishes it were warmer with more crunch.

Hee hee

"Snugness", ffs.
More coffee needed.

Not middle classness, I wouldn't buy it as I have the kit to make one. It would probably take someone a day or more to chase about and get one made if they didn't have the kit, what do you charge for a days work? (I'm not actually asking)

Though it's all relative I wouldn't complain about spending £100 on a work tool if it's what I wanted or needed and know it will be the right for what I required.

The coffee tamper on the other hand is ridiculous.