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Business of Machining - Episode 32
219 Plays8 years ago
BEEF. That's what's for 7am. People that lack authenticity can test your nerves and leave you feeling raw but it's easy to let it go when there are bigger fish to fry. Today is the first day of the rest of Grimsmo Knives. After an arduous journey with a 2.25 year pre-order, the new direction for the company becomes clear. It's like a breath of fresh processes. If you want to dig up the past, perhaps you should try using your Grimsmo Knife. According to prehistoric sources, it does a DINO-mite job. Click here. As Saunders prepares for his family vacation, he's also drilling his brain (pun intended) about incorporating re-ground tools into the workflow for the steel fixture plates. Will he be able to leave the shop rest assured or will his brain spiral out of control? TRELLO? Is it me you're looking for? Saunders and Grimsmo discuss the benefits of using this app as well as others for organization, research and other tasks. Happy belated birthday to Grimsmo! According to Saunders, they have now reached a new milestone: Boring Dad Birthday Age. I'll take my FANUC macro book and be on my way now, thanks. When life gives you lemons, you make lemonade. When life gives you 62 Rockwell, you become....a cannibal? Click below for a peek if you dare. https://www.facebook.com/NYCCNC/videos/1272462719566069/ https://www.facebook.com/NYCCNC/videos/1271578749654466/ Head over to iTunes to give the co-hosts a shout, especially if the machines are running. Until the end of September, you can leave a review and get a chance to mull things over with the guys.
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Transcript
Introduction and Episode Welcome
00:00:00
Speaker
Good morning, folks. Welcome to the business of machining episode 32. My name is John
Self-Reflection on Introduction Style
00:00:05
Speaker
Saunders. And my name is John Croom. It's my morning, buddy. Do we sound like Paul Akers when we do that introduction? I don't know. I never thought about that.
00:00:13
Speaker
Because if we do, if we sound smug and super, super, super too happy, then we need to stop that immediately. I don't know. I'm a big fan of too happy. Too happy is good, but not when it's fake and at the expense of others. You know what I mean? Like I want to see Paul Akers stressed out and angry and mad. Maybe not.
00:00:33
Speaker
No, but like talking to people that are genuinely positive people, you still get it's fake to not be. I don't know. I'm actually really, really am happy right now. Are you happy right now? I'm ecstatic right now. OK, so I was actually legit excited.
Grimsmo Knives' Pre-order Backlog Success
00:00:50
Speaker
We're recording this September 1st. I woke up and I got in the shower. My wife's like, you can look at your wife or spouse and be like, what are you thinking about? And I was like, it's September 1st. I wonder where he's at.
00:01:04
Speaker
So today is the start of the new Grimsmo knives. Are you serious? Yeah. We are completely caught up with the Rask pre-order, which has been two and a quarter years in the making. How long? Two and a quarter years. Oh my. Since we took the first orders. And for the most part, all the early ones are. It's still the new knife to me. Yeah.
00:01:30
Speaker
Wow. I mean, almost all of the early, early orders have been shipped a long time ago, but there were still a few stragglers. And yeah, it's done. And we're already four deep into the new list. Good for you. So when you say done, literally ship. When I say list, it's not a list. It's just we're counting up. Gotcha. So how are you? What is the new Grinstone Ives?
00:02:00
Speaker
It's a good answer. Pre-orders are dead to us because they're just, I mean there's a smart way to do it and there's a stupid way to do it and we did it the stupid way.
00:02:12
Speaker
Oh, come on. I don't I just I take issue with that because how you did it wouldn't it wasn't wouldn't have been my style, but I don't you made it. You did it. Yeah. And, you know, there was no other way to be blunt. That's how true. That's how you pull off things like, you know, the Maury wasn't I felt like if I can if I can say this, the Maury was never the.
00:02:37
Speaker
This is maybe taking it too far. The Nakamura was expensive. I know it took you some time to get it dialed in and it's a lot of money. I feel like that was the one that made you feel the pressure a lot more and pressure could be good on the flip side.
00:02:51
Speaker
Pressure can put you in a really, really dark place, and it can crush a business. But you did it. You're now... I know you feel like you don't want to do it again, but how else would you have gotten here, John? Right?
00:03:08
Speaker
I can't feel bad about anything that we've done because it got us where we are and I wouldn't want to change a thing basically. I guess the point is I'm not advocating the way that we did it for other people because it is very stressful.
Transition to Demand-Driven Model
00:03:22
Speaker
We're just slow, time-consuming, methodical people and that's why it took us so long. There's plenty of Kickstarter campaigns that are super successful and the guys fulfilled within
00:03:33
Speaker
almost immediately and et cetera, et cetera. And that's just not the way. I've never heard of those. Yeah, well, there are some. But yeah, I mean, the whole Kickstarter problem is, you know, long delays and oh, duh, duh, excuses and all that stuff.
00:03:48
Speaker
But yeah, from here on out, so I think I've mentioned we're going to spend the next few months till the end of the year just doing Maker's Choice knives. Whatever we want, simple. We've got a list of emails that people have been adding to, adding themselves to for quite a while now. Got it. Of people who are just interested in a knife, any knife. We're going to send you a picture. If we choose your name randomly, we'll send you a picture and a price. And if you want it, it's yours. If not, we'll go to the next guy on the list. That's cool. That's like the simplest, easiest way.
00:04:18
Speaker
Most fair way for everybody because demand is deliciously huge, but I can't just pick and choose and I can't just take the first name that comes into my email today and there is a fairness to it that I'm trying to keep and trying to make it good for everybody.
00:04:36
Speaker
Yeah, I think that'll be pretty solid. I'm sure you'll get people that want to still participate in the customization experience, but that'll just have to wait. Exactly. And you're totally right. And yes, that's just going to have to wait for our sanity and for our business to grow. We got to be kind of not greedy, but selfish for the next four months and do it our way. Yeah.
00:04:57
Speaker
And then we can move from there. Because I love doing custom orders, and I love building people the knife that they really, really want. We need to focus right now on production process, on numbers. It's four months, two. Yeah, exactly. It's nothing. And then when we do get to a point of taking custom orders, I want to take 10 at a time. And those 10 are going to be fulfilled quickly. And I think we talked about the, there's a mental,
00:05:23
Speaker
a good thing about waiting for quite a while to get this thing that you custom ordered and you have to have this patience and blah, blah, blah, but it's too stressful on our end. Like I want to turn things around quickly.
00:05:35
Speaker
Right. But it is, I don't ever forget that, you know, and I'm a little bit cynical, but you know, Ferrari's motto is, you know, sell one or offer one less car than you think you can sell. So they sell $499 because they think there's 500 people in the market or, you know, the beers in the diamond cartel that have convinced all of Western civilization that for some reason you have to spend this inordinate amount of money.
00:05:58
Speaker
No, seriously, it's absurd. And they think there's some limitation or diamonds are in any sort of a finite quantity and it's complete market fabrication, but it works. And we talked about this with the gun makers, the pistol makers, you know, think of all these other things that make you wait. And if somebody thinks they can get it right away, then it loses some appeal. Yeah, I like it.
00:06:19
Speaker
Keep that bounce. And look, we were talking about this somebody the other day. Every time we have a training class, your knife comes out. It's hilarious, in a great way. And everyone, it's actually really exciting, selfishly, to be kind of part of that, ever so small, I should say, a part of that story where, or just to be affiliated with it, where somebody's like, hey, do you have a Norseman, right? And I said, yeah, yeah, you want to see it? And it's like their first time ever holding a Norseman. And it's really cool to see them
00:06:44
Speaker
admire the quality and just what do they look at, what do they care about. Most people it's the smoothness of the pivot and the action, but it's really cool. Have you ever carried it, or do you just keep it hidden away in the box? You're hilarious. Have I ever carried it?
00:06:59
Speaker
My knife right now is a Gerber box cutter that is $6 on Amazon, and I buy a new one about every six months because I break it or lose it. Yeah, I don't know. I go on the fence because I feel like, selfishly, I feel like if I lost my Norseman, I could probably make a phone call and buy a new one. I probably have that in. But I don't want to lose it. And I use my knives hard. Yeah.
00:07:25
Speaker
I use the tip as a screwdriver. Yeah, there are limits. I mean, the Norseman especially is a very, it is a, I wouldn't call it a heavy duty knife, but it's certainly made to be used. And there's guys that, my brother-in-law uses it to dig up dinosaurs. He was just two months in the desert, literally digging up T-Rex skulls. Whoa! Yeah. And he abuses the heck out of it.
00:07:51
Speaker
It's obviously not sharp anymore, but... Right, right, right. It's too big a knife, though. Awesome for not what I want. That's the real thing. But it is awesome. And look, I'm no fan of safe queens. Do they use that word in the knife world? Oh, yeah, they do for sure. Yeah, no, that's not at
Inventory Management Insights
00:08:11
Speaker
all what I'm about. But it's also very cool to show people, you know, when they open it, like, I still have the two stickers. I think one was a...
00:08:21
Speaker
I'm almost a sticker of your logo. The other was maybe the ID card of the knife or something. But basically it looks just like when you sent it to me. So I think that's kind of cool as well. Yeah, absolutely. Speaking of which, we just completely ran out of stickers. And I feel stupid.
00:08:37
Speaker
Where's your Kanban card? Yeah, I know. And it's funny because like two or three months ago I put up a picture on Instagram asking a vinyl cut like die cut stickers or vinyl stickers. It was a pole basically and it was pretty clear cut that die cut would be the way. And at that time I was intending to order more and then I just forgot about it and now we're totally out.
00:09:03
Speaker
I am excited, I'm really excited to think about what this conversation is gonna be in February or something because I look at, I gave you that frog boiling analogy. It keeps going through my head lately about what you do and how much do you take on as an entrepreneur. Did I talk about that? I forget. Go ahead, just say it anyway.
00:09:28
Speaker
When you look at how much, you won't appreciate it until you actually start bringing in more resources and delegating, whether that's employees, or whether it's consultants, or whether it's remote or virtual workers. And then you start doing more managing instead of just tasking. And I hate, that's not a bad thing. Some people say, oh, you've been managing everything. No, it's letting Grimso be good at what you do, which is,
00:09:53
Speaker
which is creating the systems and processes to succeed. You never wanted to be a solo one man in your, you know, in your private layer of knife maker. You want to build a company, right? Right. And when you look back and you think like my job now, which is we're we're doing better than we've ever done, which makes which makes me smile. It's actually I don't talk about that because I'm going on vacation next week and it's been the most relaxed I've ever been for that. But my job now is to help
00:10:22
Speaker
with questions about the Kanban cards, or are we doing, do we need to improve that process, or what is, not as what is wrong, because that sounds like you have an accusatory tone, but you know, why are things not like, things are moving so smoothly, like we're now, Noah is laminating them, he's bringing them in, we have a must order today, and then like just when we reorder order these,
00:10:43
Speaker
And I know it sounds silly, it's just stickers, but I'll tell you, life is brutal. Yesterday, we ran out of batteries on something, we broke a tip on something. What was the other hiccup? Oh, a relay went out on a 110 bolt, all these little things that always pop up. And those fires are so much easier to put out when everything else is smooth sailing. Yeah, good point.
00:11:05
Speaker
And you don't also, I mean, at this point, you also don't want too much inventory and capital tied up. For a while, we made that very amateur mistake of combating a lack of organization by just overbuying inventory. I don't know how many half 13 cap screws I have on hand, so they're cheap, so I'll just buy a thousand of them, and that means I'll never run out. That's a terrible way to grow.
00:11:31
Speaker
That also means you're going to be one of those old guys, you know, 50 years from now getting rid of everything that nobody wants because you have, you know, a thousand and one rusty half thirteen screws that nobody cares about.
00:11:42
Speaker
Yeah, no, and it's funny, like I'm still a bootstrapper. We rebuilt our material rack and it does a better job of organizing raw material. And look, we have to keep some raw material on hand. So we buy all our raw material now, saw cut, period. We still have full length sticks on hand and we still have scraps and drops. And to me as a, I still remember back to my garage days when that was material that I could use and recycle in the shop and so forth. And now I think about,
00:12:10
Speaker
It costs money to store it. It could cost money to build things to store it or buy shelving. It sounds silly, but you can literally hurt yourself digging through too much scrap trying to find that one piece. And it has value.
00:12:25
Speaker
But not worth it when you consider like, yeah, you will lose money sending out to get recycled, but you're still doing it. It's a good thing you're getting some money back and like just let go. Like it gives me anxiety to look at a scrap pile and know that all that potentially useful living is going out to be recycled. But then, yeah, when it's out of my sight and out of my mind and I look at we just posted a picture on Instagram as well of how clean and organized and efficient it looks. It's OK.
Handling Material Scraps
00:12:51
Speaker
Get over it. Totally, totally.
00:12:52
Speaker
I keep all my little scraps and offcuts of Damasteel and Timascus, which is very expensive material. But honestly, what am I going to do with a little one inch by two inch piece? I can't make any knife parts from it. I could make jewelry from it, sure, but I can't just throw it away because it's too expensive. So I think at some point I'm going to have to either sell it or give it to knife makers who just want to make weird stuff from it.
00:13:17
Speaker
Well, but then my bootstrapper kicks in because it's like, wait a minute, if you can keep all of that in one shoe box, maybe that's okay. And maybe you do create inserts with it for something or buttons or I don't know. Yeah, the weirdest part with CNC work holding is key. And how do you hold all these super weird sized pieces to make cool stuff?
00:13:41
Speaker
You know, I kind of made this conscious decision, yeah, nine months ago, a year ago, or something about how, you know, I got into all of this because I wanted to build a product and start a product. And the very short version is, did that, succeeded, started the YouTube, took on job shop work to learn, partnership fell apart, business, that business, product business fell apart. But I've always wanted to get back into product business because I feel like I've learned so much and we've got the resources now. And so we've done that.
00:14:11
Speaker
And literally with the aluminum tormach fixture plates, we did not have a hard, they're not easy to make, but we didn't have a hard time getting through that process. The steel ones, to be honest, have kicked our butt. We have tried all these different recipes of
00:14:27
Speaker
Cold-world steel, specialty steels, alloys. When do you heat treat? When do you grind? How do you get good tolerances? How do you machine? And so now I look and I've got good grief. I've got like 15 pieces at, you know, a couple hundred bucks a piece probably of test plates, either partially machined or finished machine. And I'm like, oh my gosh, what do you do with all these? Like they have value. They cost me money. Maybe somebody would want them as a like discounted. And then it's like, no, John,
00:14:56
Speaker
we finally got the recipe nailed down, scrap them. It's okay. Yep. Yep. It's hard though for me. Absolutely. Yeah. Well, it's like, like us, we've got a lot of blemished parts, whether, you know, blades that warped in heat treat or handles that have big scratch in it or something like that, that we, we can't, we won't send out to the world as, as a knife, even as a blemish knife. I just don't want to. Um, so they're going in this box called friends and family. Okay.
00:15:22
Speaker
that eventually, you know, if my uncle wants a knife, then I'll make him a knife out of that, and he won't care about the little scratch or whatever. But I would always want to clearly define those with a big fat engraving that says, you know, not for sale or an oops. We did oops a couple times on the engraving. And, you know, things like that. Because I just never want it to be confused with our best work, when it's purposely designed as, you know, released as a blemish.
00:15:50
Speaker
That's what Jerry was saying, because he takes all our scrap down to the recycling place. And I forgot that you can go to scrap yards and buy stuff off of them. It's not like this deal immediately goes into a cauldron. And some of our plates are finished. They're not something I'm going to sell, but they have our logo on them and all the bores and the holes. And so Jerry was like, we got to TIG fill the logo in a couple of holes just to make sure it doesn't get pawned off.
00:16:19
Speaker
That's funny. I wanted to ask, when it comes to tooling, are you doing any re-grinding? No, nothing.
00:16:32
Speaker
Never will. You're talking about sending an end mill to get reground into a new profile or a sharper edge, whatever. Yeah, exactly. I'm not saying I never will. I just, it's so much easier just to buy new ones. And most of my stuff is so tiny anyway, you're not going to reground a 1 16th end mill. What's the largest end mill you normally use in your workflow?
00:16:54
Speaker
I don't think I've ever used more than a half inch add mill, and that's even just to make fixtures. Normal workflow is quarter inch. The odd three-eighths inch. Yeah, that's fine. I don't disagree with that there. We do use now for the Tormach plates, the steel ones, some half inch tooling that wears down pretty quickly. That's expensive, so I think I'll experiment.
00:17:17
Speaker
integrated a reground tool into a workflow. It shouldn't be hard with Cutter Comp, but I've never done it. Oh, that's a good point. Cutter Comp should cure that. Right. Because you need to go in and change your cam and have to put a 0.422 end mill in there.
00:17:34
Speaker
Well, it's almost, we're so fussy. We literally have gone to Grimsville on the steel plates, like we're holding insane tolerances and it makes me so proud and so happy. And that's why I wanted to get back into this was this whole, the value is the systems and the processes and the tooling and the recipes and how you create, it's so much fun. I love it. Now you've got to be economical about it. So it's like, hey,
00:18:01
Speaker
So, regrinding shouldn't be a big deal because, frankly, the end mills aren't good enough brand new to just rely on them. You've got to deal with tool deflection and cut-a-comp from the get-go. But then, when it comes to a regrind process, you now need to have a workflow.
00:18:19
Speaker
Our current thought, and we've not implemented this yet, is we'll have four of everything. So we'll generally have two that are either waiting to, or we have two that, once we get the two that are ready for regrind, they get sent out and they'll come back hopefully sooner than we need them. And then you'll have one in the machine and one extra. So you've got four end mills that are in this constant rotation. Yeah, that could work.
00:18:42
Speaker
And the bigger thing is the tooling is real, or the anvils, but the drills. Our basic recipe right now is we're getting between two and three plates out of a Sandvik through spindle coolant drill. That drill is almost $200.
00:19:01
Speaker
So you've got to re-grind that. And we just send it out to, go ahead. Well, that makes sense because the drill is like inches long, right? And you're only using the tip of it. And just to re-grind an eighth of an inch off the end is you're going to get a lot of re-grinds out of it, I'm assuming.
00:19:18
Speaker
Well, so I don't think they have to take that much off, but they will only. Yeah, I don't know. They will only. This is what I've got to learn. The rep is telling me only three or four regrimes. And I was and I said, so I said, why? I do think there's some problems when you go shorter that I can't answer, explain.
Cost-Saving Tool Regrinding
00:19:37
Speaker
But Sandvik will only regrind, a factory regrind, when they can guarantee, they call it like OE, original equipment performance or specs. I think aftermarket regrind shops, of which there are a plethora, I suspect would regrind more. And like we just send a drill out to get reground.
00:19:59
Speaker
I didn't realize that Sandvik would do it, so I sent out to a re-grind job shop, and it was like 18 bucks to re-grind and coat.
00:20:09
Speaker
Sandvik, I think, is going to be two, two and a half times that. I'm OK with that while the tool is new and they're going to guarantee performance and specs and all that. It's just a business decision. It just goes into the cost. But if I can get two or three more out from an aftermarket, I don't see why I wouldn't do that. Oh, yeah. You're saving hundreds of dollars versus buying brand new ones. Yeah. Yeah. That's a good idea.
00:20:33
Speaker
Yeah, when my anvils are $10 to $20 new, because they're so small, right? I just buy new ones. Yeah. Yeah. I saw your post this morning, and somebody called you out on Trello. I know we've talked about this before. Remind me, how do you use Trello?
Organizing with Trello
00:20:56
Speaker
So what is Trello? Trello is an app on the phone and on the desktop.
00:21:00
Speaker
laptop, PC, whatever. That is, it's a note-taking app. It's a list-making app, basically. And I've been using it for almost a year now. And I just dump everything from my head into these note cards. And I don't have, well, I try not to have to-do lists around the shop or little scraps of paper everywhere. I want it all central. I can have it synced on my phone, on my computer, on the internet, anywhere I go. I wake up at one o'clock in the morning,
00:21:27
Speaker
and I have an idea in my head, I go immediately to Trello and I put it into my brain dump list or my getting things done list. And it's just a central repository for everything. And I certainly fall into the trap of adding and not reviewing. And you're supposed to, according to the getting things done method, you're supposed to dump everything in your brain into it all the time and then review it once a week and act on anything actionable. I kind of skip that step. But at least it gives me a central place to write everything down.
00:22:07
Speaker
I feel like there's something for us to be had when it comes to like, but there's a couple other similar sites to Trello, Jira maybe, I don't remember what it is, but one of those two or some other cloud based, and I don't know whether it's like a quote, I hate to use the word ERP because it sounds like we're some conglomerate, but.
00:22:16
Speaker
And I love it. I'm great at writing to-do lists. It speaks nothing to my ability to get them done.
00:22:29
Speaker
How do you tie in task stuff with responsibility? Oh, Slack is super popular in the web development or like digital world. The entire tech world, yeah.
00:22:41
Speaker
Yeah. And then I still haven't had the time in an OK way to start thinking about any sort of a, what do you want to call it, some sort of a digital I.O. thing, like whether it's a barcode scanner or a QR code or NFC to handle our Kanban cards and tooling inventory, product inventory, boxes.
00:23:05
Speaker
And I'm not stressed that I haven't done that yet, but I don't, it's always, it's sort of crazy to think I have no idea what direction this is going to go.
00:23:14
Speaker
But that's the development process. That's the exciting part of it. You want to do something, and you're going to make it happen eventually. And then you're going to find a completely different use for it. And you're going to be like, oh, I didn't see that coming. But yeah, let's do that. Right. Like fail fast, fail cheap. Part of me just needs to spend some time. And I actually would love to compel our listeners, if anybody has thoughts. I mean, the specific task for me right now would be a way to create
00:23:42
Speaker
barcodes that or whatever barcodes or similar scannable thing that when we scan it creates an action item that could be triggers an email or a PO or inventory level or Hopefully use the same system both to order new tooling and new inventory as well as to tie in with Shopify and ship station on You know as you pack an order to confirm that you've put the right things in it and all that sort of stuff count inventory Sounds like a lofty goal, but I do think it's doable
00:24:11
Speaker
Yeah, that's a lot of cool stuff tied in together. Like you're out of this material, so you just scan this barcode and it gets automatically ordered based on the Kanban card, basically. Interesting. I'm 100% sure it can be done. And I think, frankly, if I went to Upwork and put out a job, maybe I'll do that, actually. Actually, that's a great idea. Upwork.
00:24:33
Speaker
You can use Upwork to do research as well. So maybe I'll throw a hundred bucks at somebody just say, hey, go research this sort of a general idea and give me some websites or YouTube videos or software that I should then look into because I don't mind spending time. I just would rather somebody else front load some of the work.
00:24:52
Speaker
But then or you could custom write this or you know, but I would rather do something that if I succeeded with it that you could use or viewers could use like something that's kind of 70% of the way there just requires some customization. Yep. Yep. And affordable. Absolutely. That sounds awesome. And that's something using Upwork.
00:25:16
Speaker
is something I'd like to start doing more and more the next few months. As we start to build up a little bit of cash reserves and my time becomes more critical, I need to not be doing all of these projects, and there's lots of things that I want to do, and a lot of it can be done remotely online, whether it's research, like you said, or there's our new ordering system, the way we're gonna do the Maker's Choice. I've got a list of
00:25:41
Speaker
like a Google Doc spreadsheet of email addresses and names. And I'm going to randomly pick a name to offer a knife to. And this can all be automated. And the email can be sent off automatically. And if they don't get back to you 24 hours, or they don't purchase in 24 hours, then it gets automatically emailed to the next person, things like that. So this little system with a bunch of rules can be totally written by somebody who knows what they're doing. As long as I know how to define the rules, then
00:26:08
Speaker
You know, somebody can make it happen. Your job as an entrepreneur is to find great people, get them on your team, and let them do great things. Find people. It takes a little bit of work, even on Upwork, to sift through the noise, but find somebody. It's amazing. It's amazing to think that I can find somebody, and Upwork doesn't have to be arbitraging
00:26:32
Speaker
underpriced foreign labor. Upwork can be the U.S., Canada, Germany, Czechoslovakia, or Asia, whatever. But find people who have done this before, and it is mind-blowing. Like, I've had people write custom JavaScript to do soft-card tweaks for our Shopify. And it's like, that is, yes, that's amazing. Yes. Are you reading any good books right now?
Impact of Persuasion on Business
00:26:57
Speaker
I am reading a book called Yes, Exclamation Point, which one of my entrepreneur, very successful friends recommended to me. It's by Robert Caldini and somebody else, two other people.
00:27:12
Speaker
And it's all about persuasion, in a way, and the science behind persuasion. And, you know, not necessarily getting people to do what you want, but saying things in a way that make people want to do it themselves. And yeah, my entrepreneur friend said that he really, really enjoyed this book and helped him grow his business. So, reading through that, it's my bathroom reading. Is it worthwhile yet, or are you too soon to tell?
00:27:38
Speaker
I'm a couple chapters into it, and it's fascinating case studies. It's like 50 little chapters. Each one's a little experimenting case study on certain techniques, social behavior kind of thing. So it should be pretty good. And it was my birthday last weekend, so my dad asked, what do you want for your birthday? And I said, well, there's this book. Saunders keeps talking about the Zappos book. What's it called again?
00:28:07
Speaker
Delivering happiness? Delivering happiness, yeah, yeah. Yeah, so my dad's getting that for me, and he's also buying me the FANUC custom macro programming book, this $70 one on Amazon, which I'm actually really excited about. We have officially reached the boring dad birthday age, which is... You are excited to get two relatively inexpensive books, and that has completely satiated you.
00:28:31
Speaker
Yep, I told everybody weeks ago, the only thing I want for my birthday from anybody is this $70 FANUC programming book. And you guys can all work together, I don't care. This is the only thing I want. I assume it's a FANUC book so I'll have to come freight delivery on a skid. Exactly, yeah.
00:28:50
Speaker
No, it's funny. The Yes Book gets me, I got kind of, I got kind of a little worked up. I got a pretty aggressive, I'll just say rude email from a father of a high school student, was it the robotics team or a racing team in the middle of
00:29:11
Speaker
multiple states away, you know, no proximity to what we do and it appeared based on how they wrote the email that they had just kind of googled for machine shops and sent this kind of cookie cutter email pretty, pretty aggressively asking for donations to the team and
00:29:29
Speaker
It may be, I guess it gets me worked up because I feel like to the extent that I've made it, made any sort of success, it's because you've got to understand that things have to be a win-win. When you negotiate or when you try to do a deal or a job or anything, you've got to make it a win-win for everybody. And this email, and I was like, gosh, why is the dad writing this? Like the kids need to learn to write this stuff and work on this. And then it was kind of this just like us, us, us, like your company's going to get advertising on this little robot that
00:29:58
Speaker
Let's be honest. It's not going to have any, any impact on our business. And that's not to say that that's, you know, if it's a charitable thing or helping pay it forward. Totally. I get it. But, um, it got me, I guess it got me worked up because in the real world, you've got to learn how to sell. You've got to, whatever you call it, the power of persuasion, the power of understanding, uh, the both parties perspectives. Yep.
00:30:21
Speaker
What do you do today? Today, man, it's like a whole new day. It's not that I'm without project. Certainly, I've got a lot of stuff going on. I've been working on Norseman blades. And I'm not redesigning the Norseman itself, but I'm redesigning the entire process that we make it. Because I'm still making blades the same way that I've been making blades for the past six years, fixturing-wise. And it's painful.
00:30:48
Speaker
So I'm working on a really sweet new way where we're machining the blanks, the blade blanks, complete except for the bevel, the cutting part, so that we can heat treat a relatively solid flat piece, which makes it a lot easier to heat treat and keep them flat. And then we're machining the bevels on the mori in the hard state, 62 Rockwell. Yes.
00:31:14
Speaker
It's going really well. I was so terrified of warp. That's insane. And it's not warping at all. You finally got rid of the TTS button nose in a Cat40 adapter, right? You now have a... Yes, but not very long ago. Okay, so you have like a Kirasira end mill or something?
00:31:35
Speaker
I got the Kyocera version of the same thing, and honestly, there's no improvement over the TTS, the Torak tool. But I'm using a different method now. I'm ditching that all together, and I'm just using a 3.8 ball mill. Oh. Oh. Yeah, and it's good. Solid carbide? Yep.
00:31:52
Speaker
Why that I would think when it comes to the hard milling and you care about to wear an insert like you would want to switch to an insertable. But in my current like I'm holding it completely different way now and an indexable just doesn't work. I've tried. I've thought about it. I could use one of those.
00:32:12
Speaker
You know how ISCAR and a lot of people have the replaceable end mill heads? It's a solid carbide threaded shank that goes into a thing. I could use that, except it ends up being about $70 Canadian per end mill, per insert. And like an end mill is probably $30. So there's no point, really. Got it. So you have been machine. This is insane. You have been cutting 62 Rockwell?
00:32:41
Speaker
Oh, on the Rask especially, I've been doing it for eight months. That's right. Gosh. So we literally just yesterday, in fact, last night on Instagram posted, we're filming a Wednesday widget on machining a one, two, three block with a lakeshore carbide, one of their hard milling end mills, which looks totally different. It's got a really thick core, really small gullet, six flutes.
00:33:07
Speaker
That's one of the responses was, hey, are those just case hardened? And I don't think the block is. I checked it this morning. It is, appears to be about 55 Rockwell, maybe 60 throughout, but I thought, well, let's go to something undisputedly hard. And thanks to your WhatsApp message last night, this morning I grabbed an old junker, like three quarter inch high speed steel end mill. So after we hang up this morning, I'm going to go try and machine that.
00:33:33
Speaker
John, this is insane. You can sit there with a file and it just skips over 62 Rockwell. You should cut a file.
00:33:44
Speaker
Oh, that's true. Well, then it should work. There's something cool about machining an end bill. I know. It's very, what's it called when you eat somebody? Cannibalization. Yeah, it would be cannibalistic. Yeah, that's funny. Measure the hardness of the HSS tool, the high-speed state tool, because I'm just curious what it is, and put that in your video. I've got to grind it flat on it, because you can't measure the hardness unless you've got it supported well, and it doesn't work well on a round surface.
00:34:13
Speaker
Right, right. Yeah, I was telling you in WhatsApp last night, I clearly remember early days of machining, watching this video of an HSS tool held at a vice and a carbide end mill just ripping right through it. And I was like, holy cow, that's so cool.
00:34:29
Speaker
It's insane. I still feel like we're going to fail. Like the one to three block went really well, but I'm just doobie. It just doesn't look, I was, uh, I am, you know, we are self taught. I am self taught when I first.
00:34:44
Speaker
bought my tag in 2007. When I was waiting for the machine, I rented off Smart Flix a bunch of DVDs like Daryl Hollins, Machine Shop, and these other guys. And I remember waiting for them to arrive. And I remember two things. One, I remember thinking,
00:35:01
Speaker
There's no way people crank handles on those old manual machines. They must still be like automated somehow, not knowing that you actually do turn handles on a bridge port. And two, I remember my grandpa had wood lathes and I remember thinking, there's no way, there's just no way you can actually use a tool to cut metal off on a lathe.
00:35:22
Speaker
No, I didn't realize it was supported like a metal lathe is. I was thinking a wood lathe where you hold the tool by your hand. But that's how green I was. And to this day, like right now, I do not think that that tool is going to be able to actually shear away 62 Rockwell material. It just doesn't make sense to me. Do you want me to send you a picture of my chips right now?
00:35:44
Speaker
No, I, you know, I just, I have to do it myself. It's just one of those things. No, as I offered last night, I'd be happy to send you some scrap blades that are hard and measured and tested to 60 to 62 Rockwell. And you can just play with them, just plow through them and you will be blown away at how shiny the finish is because machining hard stainless steel, it's like a mirror afterwards, especially when you're just facing it. Yeah. So I'll send you some stuff for sure.
00:36:09
Speaker
Okay, thank you. I was joking. It was like the internet's going to explode if I do a will it blend on a Norseman. Yeah, and you should and it'd be hilarious. Awesome. No, look, I got to say this, dude.
00:36:24
Speaker
I think it's because of these conversations, like I am going on vacation for a week next week with the wife and kids and life is good. There's a few little hiccup things I'm stressed about, like making sure orders get shipped correctly. That's never going to end.
00:36:40
Speaker
Right. But I got to say, generally, everyone here is, I think, excited about what they're doing. They know what's going on. I don't feel like I actually enjoy working on vacation, like just on my own to get away and think. And that's OK. I don't feel this pressure and this hustle and this stress and this, oh, my gosh, I'm going to be gone. And the business will continue, which to me is so important because it's
00:37:04
Speaker
There's nothing wrong with solopreneurship. There's nothing wrong with that. But that's not what I want anymore. I want this business to be bigger than just me. It already is. I mean, you've got six employees that can basically run the shop unattended for a week, for a few days. You're no longer a solopreneur. You've built it bigger than that.
00:37:26
Speaker
Yeah, but I still need to be way in a like, oh, I am happy to be in a place where we're helping
Hiring and Training New Employees
00:37:32
Speaker
people learn. You know, it's that debate of having Noah and Zach around who are great, but they're different. The interaction with them is different than if you had hired a 40 year old or 50 year old machinist who had been in the industry for 30 years.
00:37:46
Speaker
those people would be answering your questions, whereas I tend to be hand-holding some of that, which I like because it makes me feel like I'm kind of paying it forward. And it goes back to one of those books we talked about, which is kind of a, you know, don't worry about hiring crazy skilled labor. You know, hire people that you feel like have the right attitude and you can teach and train and so forth, right?
00:38:09
Speaker
And that's something, exactly. Everything you just said is something I want to work on in the next few months. And I want to be that teacher because I have so much to offer and so much to learn. And if I bring somebody in-house here to pick up what I know, they can not only take a huge work burden off of my chest, but I can share and teach them and they can soak up. If they're applicable, if they suit the job, then yeah, it's going to be a lot of fun.
00:38:34
Speaker
But I think that's my piece of advice to you then is number one, it's going to get worse, not better while you start that out because it's going to take, it's kind of double up kind of your load. Two, you've got to recognize the first or second or third person may not be the right fit. So I, like I said, I think there's a big fan of some sort of a finite period program where you have a chance to work with somebody and see that figure that out. And then.
00:38:56
Speaker
And again, just don't think, like, I would say set your expectation to something that's pretty conservative and heck, you know, think about the Grimsville Rule of Pi. Like, it's going to take me nine months before this person is self-sufficient, like really self-sufficient. And that's okay. Don't think after a month he's going to be problem solving, you know, heat treat oven or, or FANUC macro problems.
00:39:24
Speaker
Yep, but that's the time you have to invest to have this idealistic life and experience that we want. You know, this vision that you and I have because we're driving the bus and we're steering our companies towards whatever future we think is possible. And it takes time. And that's cool. That's great.
00:39:43
Speaker
Dude, we're coming up on one year since IMTS. Think about where we were then versus now. Isn't that awesome? You hadn't even bought a machine yet. I know, right? Right? That's crazy. Yeah. Awesome. Dude, go crush it. I'll be up in Massachusetts with the family, but I'll still call you next Friday. Sounds great. I'll see you next Friday, bud. Sounds great. Have a great day. You too. Take care. Bye. All right, bye.