While I expect everyone here is familiar with what the price of gas has been doing... and many are aware that steel has gone up, but not as many people know what's going on with other metals...
The prices for zinc, copper, and brass have gone through the roof! Over the past year, in the Pacific Rim market....:
1) Zinc has more than tripled
2) Nickel has doubled
3) Copper has more than doubled
4) Aluminum is up more than 50%
These increases all well beyond what many suppliers are able to cope with, prices are starting to jump up... and will most likely continue to do so...
Watch out for increases in things like cabinet hardware.... they're coming!
>Well, you don't actually have to take delivery of these metals, simply start playing the commodity markets. For amateurs, the surest way I know to wipe out your life's savings. :)
>good excuse to buy that Tucker Vise. Good friend emailed me a coupla three weeks ago to show photos of the one he just put on his bench. Raving and talking crazy. Idea's been buzzing in my head ever since.
Friend of mine has it. It works like a dream. It is everything said about it and more. Lightweight makes it easier to use as well. (Nevertheless, still heavy.)
>a standalone workstation, with a minimal stand anchored to a wall, with a coupla rows of tool racks in behind for some gouges and rasps and shaves and stuff--coupla knives and scrapers, you know.......well, maybe the stand would have to be big enough to hold finished work, and blanks ready to start........course it'd be nice to have room alongside the vise so it could grab a long planing beam that'd run up the room, which could also serve as a moulding beam.......and maybe a saw bench.....hey Mike, what size workshop expansion wuz you thinking about??
>Hi Wiley--actually I was talking with the youngest the other day about building a workstation along the lines of Rob's Carver's bench. A stand-up to bench. Top adjusts, etc.
Probably wouldn't support something like the big vise, though. But it would work on the main bench. But a standing bench makes sense, even in a larger space--mine is 12 x 12 currently.
For the middle of my space, I am actually building a post and beam, mortised together workbench made form 6 x 6 Fir. The top is simply a 6 x 6 on uprights. Dog/holdfast holes etc.
>It's the most useful tool in my whole shop. If I had to choose between the vise and a bench, I would take the vise. I sold my Canadian made General table saw a few years back and I haven't even noticed it was gone. The tucker vise I would miss. The only thing I would change is that they could melt a few of the sharper edges.
Still at 1.50 a pound for 6061 stock, which might well be an uptick, it's something other than the metal that costs in this case. However, metal is going up really fast and it will drive up a lot of prices. Speaking of which I always wonder how the inflation rate is falling? I can't think of too many things I buy that haven't gone up 25% in the last year. I guess it's the new math.
Speaking of metal, next time I see a metal plane that costs 300 buck or more, I'll consider there isn't anything it can do for me that a wooden plane with a 10 buck 01 blade won't nail just as well.
On your point about inflation, there is a new math used for official inflation figuring, at least in the US. Price increases are adjusted for quality. The precise way this is done is buried in government papers and computer programs. But the basic idea is that if your new computer operates at 600 gigahertz, compared to 300 gigahertz in the base year of accounting, then the price of the new computer is discounted by, say, half to account for the fact it is a better, faster computer. Am sure the actual computations are far more sophisticated, but this is the notion.
But actual non-quality-adjusted inflation is what we are looking at. And it kinda depends on your line of work how you make out. The economist who won a Nobel prize worked out that some activities can keep up with inflation and some can't. His example was along the lines that it still takes 24 minutes to play a Mozart string quintet, just like it did in the 18th century. Similarly with making a piece of Queen Anne furniture with handtools (OT content). So musicians and artisans have a tough time keeping up, while those creating more gigahertz do OK, so long as they don't get offshored. Or rationalized. Or right-sized.
>That's interesting. Some technology keeps falling in price so that if included in the household basket it would appear to make a difference. I think when I grew up my parents bought a new TV every decade, but it cost a few thousand in current dollars. Now one can buy much better TVs for less, but people's expectations have sure risen.
I've reached that stage where, relatively, I have bought just about everything. The stuff I still have to buy fuel, taxes, cars, housing, meds at some point, education for various kids, food, is all double didgit increases. Yet up here our inflation rate dropped to 1.75%. If you're in the acquisition phase, all those consumer goods are pretty cheap, but the staples aren't. I'm in my forties, but if I was a retiree I would be advocating for a CPI for that age group because the current CPI does nothing for them.
>The Tucker vise is just a vise. But if one looks at the various ways a bench holds work the Tucker vise adds several all it's own that I use a lot. Like the ability to hold stuff parallel to the Worktop. One can stuff panels in there and have all around access to them. I used to set up my guitars in there, held by the neck and adjust neck to body position on various jigs.
The one thing I wish it did do was adjust for height. one can spin it so it rises 4" above the bench. I'd like to have one attached to an actuator collumn as quite a few people seem to do with patternmaker's vises.
>One other MAJOR thing that effects the official inflations figures. They do not figure in oil and petroleum product pricing which they normally refer to as "energy" prices. The consumer price index is based on a normal (whatever that is) "basket" of commodities that most households use regularly. The producer price index is based on a similar concept using things manufacturers need. What we are talking about is the ultimate case of "YMMV"
>That's a true pity Bob. Many useful items will now be lost. I don't understand the thinking behind this. So what if Red, or anybody else is able to turn a profit from dumppicking. Perhaps Red needs the add'l cash flow and rather than ask the State for a handout he found a way to generate it himself, or perhaps he just needed something constructive to do to fill some empty hours and he chose this. either way, evereybody wins, so what's the harm?
They did this same things years back in Livermore Falls and it really sucked!