Christmas present for yourself

I think so but I'm using mine!

Scott Burr in windy/rainy Ben Lomond, CA

>A bit anyway... I received #65 for landing a new job this year after being outsourced...:(

Ahhh Man! No Fair!

Scott Burr in windy/rainy Ben Lomond, CA

>I think I know another thing to add to the list...

This is a hard thread!

A gas powered TP launcher?

Scott Burr in windy/rainy Ben Lomond, CA

>Perhaps a bit of a Todd H's "anvil launching" device...

Or was that nitro launched?

Ohhh.... Ahhh... Ooo...

Scott Burr in windy/rainy Ben Lomond, CA

>OK, now I'm getteing upset with all of you.

Very nice choice!

Wait one second...Retirement =time right?

Scott Burr in windy/rainy Ben Lomond, CA

>Please don't get me wrong here Bill. Sounds like you have less than you had...

Gotta agree, buy... buy Steve.

Scott Burr in windy/rainy Ben Lomond, CA

>More lathe tools and bigger turning devices.

I've heard it's worse than crack...your a gonner forsure.

Hey I could use a new pepper mill, first one's free right?

Enjoy!

Hopefully...

Scott Burr in windy/rainy Ben Lomond, CA

>The nice job I have will go from contract to a perm. position.

Nice place, nice people. Keeping my fingers crossed...

I did happen to order a pair of the LV large spokeshave kits to make some matching friends for the small flat and round one I made last year.

Re: Warrington, or the other?

Angus Barclay, in New Zealand

>Hello Bill,

I've ordered the 10 1/2 oz Warrington hammer.

Percussive tools have become a bit of another slippery slope for me. I can really see a need for at least 6 different hammers (so I need at least 3 more) and a similar number of mallets (so I need another 4 of them). Like I tell my wife when she looks at the uncounted planes and raises an eyebrow in the way that only wives can: "They all do something different."

regards

Angus Barclay

Bookends?

Pam Niedermayer - Austin, TX

>Well, now, there's an idea, use all your collected, have-too-many-to-use planes as bookends for all those woodworking books. Thing is though, so many of the books are tall and heavy. How does your Marcou hold up "The Shaker Legacy?" :)

Pam

Re: Big ripper

Pam Niedermayer - Austin, TX

>Thanks for the good words on the Mosaku. Do you use yours much?

From a philosophical standpoint, I think custom manufacturing is where the west is headed. Away from commoditization, which is a losing game for us, cause you're competing always with the lowest paid workers on the planet, and as a consequence exporting jobs, losing our cadres of people who used to do those jobs, and devaluing our money. We need to go where commodity manufacturing can't go--and that's towards customization. I look for increasing amounts of customization and short-lead-time delivery as a coming business practice, whether it's in buying saws and planes, or blue jeans, automobiles, and boots.

There may be a narrow window for this customization, open while there are still a few regular people who can afford it; however, I think there will be fewer and fewer of us as the years of commoditization and low price focus accumulate. I think our future holds money for the following careers: salesmen (above all, I consider advertisers an extension of the category), lawyers, doctors for a while longer (in the near future they will be commoditized, too), academics (good living wages), entertainers (right up there financially with salesmen, but fewer in number), politicians (also fewer in number), and bureaucrats (not so much money, but a living wage at least). As the years accumulate, we'll lose our design edge. Since we no longer produce anything much high tech, with more and more production being done elsewhere, we won't gain the knowledge that comes with production and production alone. This will hasten our fall into a third world nation, assuming nations will still exist in 20 years. My only hope at this point is that transportation will become prohibitively expensive, so production will begin to localize again.

Pam

Re: Bookends?

Derek Cohen (in Perth, Australia)

>Thing is though, so many of the books are tall and heavy.

Hi Pam

I hope you realize that I was just kidding?

Still, the heft of the Marcou or the LN is quite substantial - they are no pushovers (literally and figuratively). Whether either of them are in keeping with the spirit of the Shakers and should be seeking their company is another issue altogether.

Regards from Perth

Derek

Oops... the dust hasn't settled

Dave Thompson

>I guess I posted a little early. If it's any consolation, your out-sourcer may have been more generous than they planned. Last night, another one closed, but at $961.

fwiw, I am using mine.

enjoy,

Dave

Nah

Mike Fitterling

>Figure I'll score first for the few times I would need a nicker. I have a fairly cheesy modern Record 60� which I use all the time, thought the 60�R would be a nice step up and a chance to own my first LN at a reasonable price and find out what all the fuss is about.

Re: Good buy...

Tony Sade (Charleston, WV)

>And one just went for over $900. Wish I'd bought seven. Tony

Commoditization (OT)

Wiley Horne

>I'm more optimistic than that, and am also trying not to be political here, where I'll have to show myself the yellow card.

Not thinking that the west will move toward true one-at-a-time manufacturing. But rather, that we will sophisticated manufacturing processes, combined with equally sophisticated software--which would permit the customer to order with quite a bit of customization, and still receive the order in a reasonable time frame. For example, I heard the vet techs and reception ladies at my vet talking among themselves the other day about how they couldn't find blue jeans to fit any more. I was all ears about the details, but that's another story. Anyway, I was thinking, why can't they put four measurements into a computerized order form, and have bespoke jeans delivered in the mail in 10 days?

One of the key ingredients to making this happen would be software development. Software developers could make lots of money. Software integrates everything starting with the customer order form/account, through billing, through inventory and restock, through machine control. Seamstresses wouldn't do well, but software developers would. Why can't this happen?

Wiley

Re: Commoditization (OT)

thomd

>I think it is happening a lot, if not yet in bluejeans. Certainly in metal fab people get all kinds of stuff cut in very fancy ways on water jet cutters etc... What makes it exciting is that metal has always been so difficult to work that being able to cut whatever you want out of a flat sheet is a big step forward in fabrication as well as allowing custom applications. I can't imagine similar excitement over cutting stuff out of plywood, it happens but not as a breakthrough product just a manufacturing efficiency.

I used to get all my suits and shirts made in Hong Kong, so if the bluejeans business were to take off, I'm not sure the end result would be more jobs over here. Also a main reason for custom clothes is people being too fat to fit off the rack. Sorta a McFood segway. People do seem to have a resistance to quality if a price is low, so will they keep eating junk food to the extent they all need high quality tailored clothing, or will they just pour themselves into more shapeless clothing with someone's logo on it.

It's a real border buster. I keep waiting for the day when someone is shot by a gun where the majority of parts were just CNCd on a lathe mill. No opportunity for border searches, no BATF agents, just some G codes and a machine shop.

Not less time, no

Bill Houghton, wintry rain again, Sebastopol, CA

>the job soaked up insane amounts of energy, and time whenever it could.

I'm hoping this is a transient condition - once my parents' house is ready to sell, I shouldn't have more to do there except help in deciding which of the dozen competing offers, all over list, we want to accept (he said, with great, unfounded-in-the-current-market hope).

Re: Commoditization (OT)

Jim Shaver Oakville, Ont.

>Hi Wiley..

"I'm more optimistic than that, and am also trying not to be political here, where I'll have to show myself the yellow card."

I have you covered..

:-)

Take care,

Jim

Re: interestingly in Louisville...

Mike Hamilton

>at the AAW symposium, one of the fellows in the booth hyping the new Laguna lathe talked quite a bit about it's potential for metal work and mentioned making gun parts. Not what I was prepared to hear at a wood-centric event.

Regards,

Mike Hamilton

Plainfield, IN

Re: Commoditization (OT)

Dave Anderson Chester, NH

>Hi wiley,

The software currently exists for one-off production on most CNC machine tools including lasers and water jet cutters. In many industries there is a movement to lean manufacturing where widgets are made only when orders are received for them. This cuts the costs of maintaining inventory of finished goods but does still require a raw materials inventory. As an example, Lie-Nielsen already works on a modified lean manufacturing basis and maintains as small a finished goods inventory as possible. I discussed this with them this past summer while I while I was at their 25th anniversary celebration. For any manufacturer, the fly in this ointment comes from the unwillingness of customers to wait any length of time for their purchase. When you order to a custom variation of a standard product, or desire a fully custom product, even with the most modern software and equipment the maker still needs time which can vary greatly based on his or her workload.

Re: Bookends?

Pam Niedermayer - Austin, TX

>I hope you realize that I was just kidding?

And likewise? :)

Pam

Custom jeans, etc. *LINK*

Pam Niedermayer - Austin, TX

>Below is the link for Lands' End. They also have custom clothing for women, but thought you guys might be more interested in men's offerings. They've been doing this for a couple or three years; and I'm sure they're not the only ones.

I don't find this a political issue at all, at least not in any sort of rah-rah, vote-for-my-candidate way. I suppose that at heart all issues are political, or can easily be made so. How many times have you heard the following: "Do I buy LV or LN?"; "I don't buy any Asian machinery."; "Should I buy European machinery?"; and then there's "Chinese chisels are junk." And twenty years ago it's likely we would have gotten an earful for buying Japanese tools and hastening the downfall of America.

The fact is that great sums are bypassing the middle class and, if nothing is done, we will no longer have a middle class, which, in my opinion, has been our great strength, the envy of many countries. And this bypass is more likely to continue than not, assuming the outflow of good paying manufacturing jobs continues. We may be beyond the tipping point on manufacturing, including software. Given this, what's also likely is that we will lose the accumulation of knowledge that comes with production. Beyond the obvious, such as the enhanced design techniques brought about by designers talking with manufacturing, there are the non-obvious, such as supply chain management, which are vital.

But who really knows? Perhaps what's left of the creative middle class will create pockets of technology, like Mike, that can invade corporate America. The organic farming movement is very encouraging, as is the ecological industry. And there's always space travel as we swarm to other planets in search of breathing room. Me? I'm abdicating, trying to become a member of the entertainment industry; but that's because I'm old and would rather amend software writing into fiction writing, something of a continuation rather than starting over. My advice to young people is to become salespeople or lawyers.

Great conversation for the end of the year, Wiley. Thanks for starting it.

Pam


Lands' End custom clothing

Re: KMG grinder?

thomd

>I have the KMG and you could use it in the same way, in some ways it's better since the whole belt moves at the same surface speed, and there are certainly a wide range of papers available for it. It's a gangly piece of machinery, and not always out in my shop. The M II is more pupose built for putting edges on tools and the flat mylar discs are a particularly good for not mushing edges. KMG rules for making knives and tools.

I think the KMG is a lot more expensive than you make it sound, particularly considering the postage to Canada, The motor on my KMG is also about 800 while a similar motor off US ebay these days would be about 100. Overall you may find a KMG costs closer to 1500 C by the time you land your first embrace.

KMG stands for knife makers guild or group. It was developed as the ideal self made grinder for home production, and now it is an icon in it's finished form. It really would be easy to make yourself, as long as Rob continues to sell the parts. There isn't any welding in a KMG, save one tack on the adjuster. Maybe we should take this to a sidebar.

Re: Metal lathes

thomd

>That's interesting. It bugs me no end that most wood lathes aren't available with devices that would allow some limited metal turning. It a massively usful capbilty particularly for a wood turner. In fact as a wood turner, if I was starting all over again I probably wouldn't waste money on a wood lathe and just buy a metal one since making one with the other only works in one direction. I tried to get Oneway to consider this approach but maybe as real machinists they realized that a metal lathe without a screw cutting ability is a bit of a joke. Two things about that: One that's less true from a woodworker's perspective. The other is that apparently there are retrofitable electric advance devices that allow screw cutting.

Getting a metal lathe is on my xmas list, but the wife (first time ever in history, she is really supportive) thinks the weight of machines is starting to make me nasty.

5 tpi, 6ppi--we can't get no rain down here

Wiley Horne

>