Quote:
Originally Posted by Ashikabi
Why doesn't OP just make more? These seemed to sell well
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I wish I could but maybe this will help explain why I don't make these all year round and only in small batches when I do...
1. I'm not a store. I'm just an enthusiast and owner like the rest of you. I work 50+ hours a week, commute 3 hours round trip to work and back, and try to have a life when I do finally get home (keyword is try).
2. These are not made locally. The machinist I use is in British Columbia, Canada. I live in Ontario, Canada. That's over 4,000kms away. I do this because local vendors wanted to charge double for production versus what I was paying to get these out of BC. I wanted to make these affordable. This was not for profit, simply to help out the community. This is also why I make larger batches as small batches are more expensive as I have to pay for lathe setup each time we run these. And remember, the capital investment is big and I run the risk of taking the loss if members don't buy them.
3. Once these were produced and shipped to me, I had to go pick up 15lbs times the number of kits (most orders were north of 200lbs of stainless steel) and assemble the kits individually for members. My wife would graciously pick up packing materials about 1.5 hour away as it seemed no one local offered affordable options that would be robust enough to ship an item of this mass.
4. If you've ever tried to ship multiple items to a variety of addresses around the globe and you're not a business, you'll know it's not a "click to ship" type of thing. It ties up the post office for hours.
Not to mention you run the risk that something happens, a package goes missing, etc. and someone doesn't get what they paid for. I don't make extra. So when this happens, it's expensive to sort out the problem for both myself and the user and that's not fair to anyone. I only had this once and I was lucky enough to still have one set left to support the user.
So it's not simply make bars, sell bars, PROFIT. It's a favour to the members here because over the 15+ years I've been on forums, I've been lucky enough to be a recipient of some of the awesome items members have custom made and I was happy to be able to return that favour to others on this project.
If I get around to making more, I'll be sure to post it here. These aren't hard to make, though. Use your creativity and I'm sure you all can come up with something as great, if not better, than what I've done.