Transcript
Speaker: Good morning. Welcome to the Business of Machining, Episode 98. My name is John Saunders. And my name is John Grimsmough. Good morning. Good morning, my friend. How are you? I am less sick than I was before. You still look great, John, but you still sound horrible. Why, thank you. So I took three days of vacation last week, and all it takes is to get really, really, really sick.
Speaker: Wait, oh, you took sick days, not a while. I'm joking. I went on vacation. No, I didn't. But it's it was one way.
Speaker: to actually not get any work done, like to, to remove myself from work, not only physically, but my brain just did not work for two and a half days. Yeah. That's a bummer. Yeah. It was kind of a bummer, but also kind of like a nice reset because you know, Saturday afternoon, all of a sudden I just started to like, the engine started turning again by Sunday night. I couldn't sleep. Yeah. And then Monday I'm like waking up to like crazy weird dreams.
Speaker: about work. And then, you know, okay, my brain's coming back. My brain's on fire again. But then I was still slow for a couple of days because I didn't eat for two days. So. Oh, my God. Yeah, it was it was rough. It was like a stomach bug. No, it was like like flu, I guess. Flew without the fever. Yeah, I was just in bed watching Netflix and getting bored.
Speaker: But this like screams e -myth, John. Your business needs to be in a place where that's an annoyance, but it goes on. And the worst is if you're actually legitimately getting sicker or more sick because you're stressed, because you're not at the business and the business can't make parts without you. I mean, we've been over this. Totally.
Speaker: Yeah, and nobody missed me. Everything happened without me, which is great. Awesome. Everybody's texting me, wishing me well and stuff, and just rest up, get better, don't worry, we got this. Yeah. And yeah, it's great. So you're a little bit better. Yeah, I'm feeling significantly better. Yeah, just more tired. Yeah. Good. I made a lifestyle creep purchase.
Speaker: What's that? Not really, I'm kind of joking, but I lost my Urban Survival Gear pen in Vegas. And I did the usual, I really looked forward to make sure, and I just, I lost it, okay? I mean, it's been, I've had it for over a year, great pen, no big deal. But I actually wanted to change it up, and I have heard through social media and through you about Will, is it Will Hodges, tactile turn? Will Hodges, my bud.
Speaker: Yeah, so I picked up one of his pens. It hasn't come yet, but I just ordered it. But I'm super excited because seeing his story is awesome and he looks like a super quality product. I'm excited to get my saga, but I need a pen in the meantime. And I kid you not, I went to go home at the end of the day. I just bought the
Speaker: tactile turn pen before heading out for the night and I open up the zipper to my bag to put my keys in the pocket where my keys go and extra like pocket stuff that I don't keep in my pocket like my AirPods and stuff and there's my Urban Survival Gear pen. I mean I must have looked in that pocket 20 times between Vegas and now and I don't know how I missed it. That is hilarious. Good. Isn't that one of those like light
Speaker: No, I know, but I was also hoping there was a saga in there and there wasn't. Yeah. I didn't slip it in there last time we hung out. No. Yeah. But it's cool. I'm excited. It's funny because it's like I think I bought this sixty dollar fifty nine dollar slider pen or something. So it's nothing that expensive. But I'm actually really excited for it. It's fun buying this kind of like high end quality stuff. You get to support a small maker. Actually, last week I got my first custom knife ever.
Speaker: Oh, really? I don't have any other knives except for like cheap production knives and my knives. Yeah. I've never, I don't know, for me personally, like out of my and my wife's bank account to spend a thousand dollars on a knife. It's not going to happen. Yeah. So I got a knife from my good friend Brad Southerd.
Speaker: And nice. Yeah, we've been friends since 2012, since the beginning, 11, 2011. Yeah, so came in the other day. He, he's got a laser engraver at a shop and he put there's got to be 10 hidden engravings on this thing. Like on the inside, there's big, big letters that says hi, john. That's hilarious. There's a Tony Robbins quote. There's, can you hold it up for me? Yeah, sure.
Speaker: Let's see it. Oh, awesome. Yeah, I recognize it. Yeah, it's got a time mask clip. Yeah. I absolutely love this thing. That's awesome. Yeah, it's beautiful. For folks that are listening, where can they find his stuff online?
Speaker: uh, southerd knives .com like South hard, but Southern. Um, yeah, Brad is a wicked guy. He's one of those, you know, like will, um, got a growing business. He's been doing this for 10 or 12 years now. Um, really just cool, smart down to earth guy. One of my best friends. And, uh, it's awesome to be able to have a part of his story.
Speaker: Yeah, absolutely. He's the one who you shared the booth with, right? Yep, we've done that for like two or three years in a row now. And we'll be doing it again this year. Yep, just awesome. Yep. So speaking about fellow entrepreneurs and other businesses, I had some really, really frustrating experiences with some other companies. And they don't need to be named because it doesn't matter. That's not the point of this story.
Speaker: As an entrepreneur, I've actually really been focused on not letting that stuff affect me anymore. It's one of those, you know they're in the wrong, they're handling things very poorly, they're making strategic decisions that you either think are wrong or you just don't agree with, but it's not your company. I've actually had to deal with a little bit of letting that go. Some of them relate to our shipping and logistics, some of them relate to the more CNC world.
Speaker: The common thread across many of these is the breadth of the company, meaning they're at the risk of summarizing this scenario. They're spreading themselves across lots of different products and services, usually in a manner that has been a form of growth. So they're trying to add new things, do new things, separate things out. And what occurred to me is it's one of the things, I didn't even realize it, that I love about you.
Speaker: you make an incredible knife.
Speaker: period and you're going to make a pen and the knives are not going to sacrifice because of the pens. These other companies made a pretty good knife and then all of a sudden went into one, two or five different directions and their knives now stink, period, as the analogy. I mean it's horrible and they don't care and they just expect you to deal with that and they expect the market to deal with that or not realize it or
Speaker: They're not willing to accept like, hey, you guys aren't even good at what you were supposed to be good at. And some of these are companies we all know and deal with. I just, again, I want to keep things positive and focus the parallel on a really good long -term survival tactic, which is not always chasing growth, staying true to your core principles, living within the business means and doing freaking like, and good for you. Cause I know you had some pushback from people inside and outside saying you need to grow more, do more, whatever, but
Speaker: That's where you remind me of Steve Jobs when he's just like, I don't care what you say, we're going to have straight walls on our injection molds, like figure it out. We're not compromising quality, we're not compromising on aesthetic. And you'd be careful because that kind of stuff can also bankrupt you, but in your case, you've done the numbers and you guys are crushing it on that front and you're sticking true to it, which you should recognize if it's not now, will be an admirable thing.
Speaker: Yes, thank you very much. Although I do see as we grow and things like customer service become a busier job. At some point, it can't be my job anymore. You know what I mean? Yes, right. And as we get busy, I mean if we double our sales next year, which is conceivably possible.
Speaker: Right. That's going to double shipping. It's going to double happy customers. It's going to double unhappy customers. It's going to blah, blah, blah. Everything's going to grow. So like it's not like you can just be like, oh, let's make, you know, let's add two more pallets and just will machine that many. And then Eric and the guys can finish that many profit. No, but like every part of the chain has to grow with it.
Speaker: Right. The marketing has to grow to suit it as well, right? So you're right. Right. Yeah, even getting so funny, but even getting a simple machine, even if it were identical is going to change, I want to say the quality, but actually Lockwood had a great quote. What was that yesterday on WhatsApp? Quality is a process, not a
Speaker: procedure or something on WhatsApp? Maybe you weren't. I meant to grab it. I'll have to go see if I can search for it. But it was kind of the point of like, you don't just, oh, it's a process, not a light switch. Like it needs to be part of the routine throughout many different aspects. It's not something where, when you're in, this is true for us, when you're in the right mood, or when you all of a sudden decide it's important, you're gonna flip on the quality light switch, do some quality work, and then turn it back off and go back. I'm not saying we don't, we're not good, but like, what does I think about 2019, I think about,
Speaker: more gauges, more process, more machine probing stuff, a CM like more ways of setup sheets, partial inspection seats, more ways of truly integrating quality, not just having to be something you sometimes do at the end of a process. Absolutely. I like that. I am 487 messages behind on the WhatsApp chat. But I will be catching up soon.
Speaker: Yeah, no, that's fair. Yep. Anyways, speaking of quality, our big box store up here, Canadian Tire, they sell like everything, but toolboxes is something that often goes on sale around Christmas. So they have like, you know, Husky style toolboxes. They call them maximum. Anyway, one went on sale for half price and like just kind of a rolling cart with, you know, toolboxes and it works surface and stuff.
Speaker: And I'm like, okay, let me just get it. So I got one through the back of the car, brought it here, then we assembled it. It sat around for a couple days, not knowing exactly where we're going to put it, but everybody's like, yeah, it's really nice, good quality and stuff. So then we talked about putting it by the lathe. So I just moved it over by the lathe. And then within like an hour while Angelo's making parts on the lathe, he starts filling it up with all the laid stuff for this thing that's scattered on my bench, that's scattered in the other mill or in the, um,
Speaker: You know, the other tools chart and all of a sudden it's like, well, this belongs here. This, this has everything we need. Now I just need to buy a set of calipers for this tool cart for this machine and then golden.
Speaker: Yep, that's awesome. You'll never undo that. No, exactly, right? I already started putting stickers on it. There's like an orange vice sticker and an MJK sticker. Yeah, it's good. No, it's literally like we've got the little plastic, what would you call it, the shower caddy plastic thing for the super glue technique. And it's so awesome because it's like you've got the tape, you've got the burnisher, you've got the release,
Speaker: I did it for my garage at home when I need to do oil changes for my car, my truck, and my wife's Highlander. I've got the 15 millimeter socket wrench, the oil cap thing, the extra filter. It's so silly, but it's a great example of lean done right.
Speaker: I also was thinking about, our blooper videos are so popular, I was thinking about filming a lean gone wrong video. Because we've made some mistakes. We've had some Kaizen overdone Kaizen stuff and some, I don't know, I don't know if it would be as funny as a blooper's video, but we've definitely overdone lean somewhere. So okay, you figure that out and you...
Speaker: Get rid of it. You try it like speed. Speed is the winner here. Try and fail and try and fail. Throw up a picture of the card on Instagram. I haven't seen anything. No, I've been really quiet on Instagram for a long time. Yeah, I will do that. That's really good.
Speaker: So we just filmed a new YouTube channel intro. You should maybe do one too. I don't know if I've watched yours because you only see it by default if you're not subscribed to the channel, which makes it easy to forget about it. Yeah, I think Aaron's planning one. Okay, perfect.
Speaker: But so we kind of did it with the idea we're going to launch it on the first of the year. And it's basically focusing our channel now around kind of two projects. One is Johnny Five. So we're like, it is January 1st in one year or at the end of December 31st, you're going to be looking at a full blown working replica Johnny Five.
Speaker: So we're giving ourselves a deadline. And it's a lot of work.
Speaker: But I think that's exciting. And so, um, you know, it's kind of an incentive to say, Hey, subscribe, um, get alerts like, Hey, come on by. Like we're going to be building this robot. And, um, the idea is first of all, the idea is for us to have fun because that's something I'm excited about and frankly, what I want to do, but also a little bit more of an indirect way of trying to get folks inspired to learn, to show techniques behind how to machine suffer, make parts.
Speaker: Or make projects too because there's a lot more of the robot that's beyond just traditional machining There's this making element of tying in various skill sets and tricks and finishing techniques and electronics and so forth and then Alex is going to be working on Engine stuff so he's built we're building a winkle. Yes we're figuring out how to try that into the trying to tie that into the Datron longboard, okay
Speaker: We thought about mounting a wank along the longboard ends up that's not even remotely close to safe or physically, aesthetically, functionally okay. So one of my thoughts is we can make a wankle tug, like a little tug that you could use to pull you around on the longboard.
Speaker: But the point is there to have some fun with engine stuff and tie that in. We've got some cool gear mechanisms we're working on. But all that, like it's super exciting because now it gives us those sort of two avenues of focus throughout the year to start making or to keep making videos on. Yes. I saw one of your latest videos. You made one of those hypocycloid gears.
Speaker: Yes, man. I remember that from 2008, like when we were starting to get into this trade and there were like videos out there of guys with their hobby machines making this cool hypocycloid gear. And I was like, oh, I got to make that one day when I get my CNC machine, I'm going to make that. And I never did. It just seemed like the coolest thing ever.
Speaker: So we're going to try to tie one of those in to the output of the Lenko because they're phenomenal at an incredibly high gear reduction in a single stage. OK. Yeah. And they're not back driveable. They've got very little backlash. Are you going up or down? What do you mean? Well, if you spin the motor at 1 ,000 RPM or whatever, you're going to. Oh, down for sure.
Speaker: Yeah, the Wankle is going to run at many thousands of RPMs. How big is it going to be? About. Like a full size one or a half something. Yeah. Smaller than a laptop in terms of footprint. So maybe six inches cubed or something. But that's, if I recall, like the Wankles that were actually in road cars are not that big either. They're bigger than that.
Speaker: They're probably like a foot. They're nothing like what? A foot in diameter or something. Okay. You can get a tremendous amount of power out of one that is, you know, again, the size of smaller than a small laptop or tablet. Yeah, that's gonna be awesome. Yeah.
Speaker: I'm excited. And it's going to be tricky, too. But the work he's done, in fact, this week's Wednesday widget, or is it next week's, is making a wankle fidget spinner, which I know fidget spinners aren't in anymore. But this is cool because it shows how to do the epi...epi...epi...epitrok... I can't remember. Epi...the...yeah. It shows you how to make the two circles.
Speaker: But it's also I think a really good project for folks that are trying to either get into machining and want something a little bit more challenging or for folks that are running like a makerspace or a high school program or a college program. Really good multi -part assembly. It's definitely doable.
Speaker: You can even 3D print some of the parts if you need to get it done quicker or don't want to hold some setups and tolerances, but really cool project. And it's got like a science fidget spinner because as you turn it, you're seeing the winkle move through the rotary pattern, which is really mesmerizing. Yeah. So when somebody complains that it's a spinner, then you just go, no, no, because science, like, trust me. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Right. That's awesome. So yeah.
Speaker: So other than being sick, what have you been up to? I have been relishing in running two palettes at the same time. How's that going? Perfect. Awesome. Slight differences. So Amish's four fixtures are basically identical, but they're somewhat different than my old one, probably because I made my old one slightly wrong. But I was used to the old one and my CAD suits that.
Speaker: So you go to put a part, like a blade on the side of the new one, and it just makes the blade weird. So that's all right. Just takes a little bit of fine tuning. So currently we're making, we're hard milling the blades on just the old fixture. And then just last night, I sit up way too late, dialing in the final tweaks that I need to do for Amish's fixture now. So I'll be testing that today.
Speaker: Are you modifying the actual fixture or just the cam that runs to the parts? Just the cam. I'm actually going to get the probe in there and hit the side of the blade with the probe because we're cutting the bevel of the blade right now, the cutting bevel, right? Okay. So I want a probe from the surface and I want a machine from surface inward.
Speaker: Um, yeah. So that we get a consistent inward, because if the bevel is too far to the left or to the right, it's visible and it, I don't like it. Right. And we've always had a problem with that ever so slightly. So I think this will be really, really, really good. I've been Eric's been asking for it for like six months. So it's good to finally get it done.
Speaker: That's something that does, I don't know what it's called, stresses me out, but I've heard it from folks that are seasoned, that are experienced, which is things like fixtures have behavior and characteristics. And when I got all excited about the idea earlier this year of a horizontal with higher density and multiple tombstones,
Speaker: you know, there's some legitimate concerns there, which is, you know, if an operator forgets to tighten one mighty bite, and you ruin fixtures and tools really quick, or, you know, you can make a lot of bad parts really quick, and every side of every tombstone can have slightly different, and you can over probe it, but that's not always in the spirit of production. That's basically where I'm at right now. I mean, we're not high production, so we can eat the time. But yeah, I'm basically over probing everything.
Speaker: because I know it works, I know how to make the result I want. Sure. This goes back to that thing I was trying to bring up at AU which is...
Speaker: I don't know if this will ever come about, but it is basically array storage probing. So I want to pull my probe out once. And let's say I've got a Norseman fixture, four Norseman pallets, that's eight knives. And let's say that there's four features per thing I want to probe special locations of. I'm going to probe 32 things right now and store those in an array or whatever. I don't care what the method is. That's exactly exactly what I'm doing now, except I'm just doing it very manually.
Speaker: So you're doing all the probing with one tool change, and then you're putting the probe away? OK. God bless you. That's amazing. Exactly. So basically turn the probe on, move over here, touch, move, touch, move, touch, move, touch, move, touch, move. Every time after the touch, it applies variable 137, which is the probe distance. And it just moves that to a different variable, like 180, I think. So I've got 180, 181, 182, 183, 184. And then I can do my math and offsets afterwards.
Speaker: Good for you. That's freaking awesome. So right now, I've got four blades on the side of each fixture. The probe comes down the side and it moves in X and it touches for a blade. And sometimes we don't put blades in there because we don't have enough or because we're choosing not to, whatever. So I'm like, OK, if there's no blade, don't machine that spot.
Speaker: skip it, move to the next one. So that's what I'm doing now. You know, if we have four blades on one fixture and no blades on the other fixture, that's like 35 minutes of air cutting on the second fixture. So as of last night, it's going to skip those each individual one. Gosh, my only concern is be careful because, look, absolutely saving time is important, but also crashing machines or having unstable code, that scares me too.
Speaker: Yeah, so it's one of those things. It's like I work so hard on it and then I'm like, okay, I think I'm good. I need to go to sleep now. And I go to sleep and I lay down to bed and I'm like, wait, did I add this safety? I gotta add that safety. Okay, let me write a note to myself. Yeah, I've been using the voice recorder on my phone a lot more lately.
Speaker: Yeah, because I can say, I don't want to say it right now because it'll work, but hey, S -I -R -I open VR and then just start recording notes. And then I can usually when I'm too busy to want to type something or if I'm distracted or driving or something, you can do that hands -free, which seems safe and smart. It dictates the notes into words.
Speaker: No, it's just a voice recorder. So it just stores it as a WAV file or whatever audio file on your phone. And then I just, I can't remember these things anymore in my head or I'll forget them, but I won't forget. I won't forget. Oh, I did a voice recorder earlier this week. Let me go transcribe that myself or figure out what I meant to do with that, which is usually fine. There were time sensitive stuff. Would be nice if it transcribed it just into an open notepad that was just like line by line by line.
Speaker: Siri's CNC terminology is weak. Fair. Let me tell you. Yeah. Yeah. I've got that's a good Instagram channel right there. It's like how she misinterprets things like the word brooch or hex key or CNC or tolerance. It's pretty laughable. That's awesome. Yeah. So I told you before I moved my desk out to the shop floor.
Speaker: It is awesome and I got a small desk. I went for the last, I don't know, my whole adult life I've used dual monitors back to a single monitor. I've got a computer, one of those little small HPs I zip tied or faceted up to the top of the desk. I've got all my cords kind of neatly done, not like
Speaker: OCD, you know, I don't have anything else to do but just like it looks nice and the desk is actually on wheels So now there's just one power cable that connects everything. I've got a power strip on it So if I need to move my desk around it's just one cable and I can move the whole thing around. I've got my Kanban ordering bins shallower bins on the desk and I love having a small desk because small desk is means there's no place for stuff to just accumulate Hear that
Speaker: Yeah, and it's just been phenomenal. I can't believe how big a change it's been in a good way. Nice. You said you got a new computer for Jared. Was it like another HP mini thing or something similar or less?
Speaker: No, similar. That article we have on our website on NYC CNC on what computer to buy for Fusion, that's a super popular article. And so we want to make sure we keep that up to date with changing computer stuff. So it was actually perfect because Alex keeps that article up to date.
Speaker: Every week or two, but I also want to eat what we kill so the I think I bought Jared it was I don't know between 700 and $900 or something, but it's a pretty pretty Good performance SSD discrete graphics card all that. I don't remember Then brand sorry, but it's not it's on that would there go Yeah, something I definitely want to do for next year early next year is start getting more computers around here Yeah, yeah
Speaker: Yeah, that's good. He needs it. And his computer is actually not even that bad, but it needs like a pure wipe and then it'll just become a backup or it'll become maybe somebody else's computer. But Jared needs a good computer. Excellent. Hey, I wanted to ask you, we also need to start doing...
Speaker: job runners or something like a paper trail that gives us more use like when we make tormach fixture plates we just make a bunch of them and they get inventory but we're now doing sort of just in time like for the Haas plates a bunch of them have been everyone has like one little tweet like hey can you just move this one hole over for me on this plate or can you do something else which is actually fine that's kind of
Speaker: something I'm proud to be able to do as minor mods on Justin Time's stuff. But that means I need to mark it as, hey, this is Justin's mini mill plate, or this is Jared's VF2 plate. And then if we have certain behaviors or characteristics or notes, it's pretty normal stuff, I think, but we don't do that right now in a deliberate manner. We do it in a reactive manner. Do you guys do anything on the knives tracking that? Yeah, I mean, I've just got
Speaker: When we went to Blade Show, we did sort of a draw your name ballot system. So I've got all these 2017 ballots left over. And I've just got a stack of them next to my desk. Scratch paper. So I just used the empty backside. And I'll write the guy's name. I'll write sometimes his email address. And then any deets of the knife might be like custom engraving or
Speaker: for whatever reason, this guy needs a blue knife with piney comb handles and yellow gold hardware. And then that'll just follow the knife throughout the entire process. And then if Eric needs that any tweaks, he can just add it to that. You know, custom little thing or a little color choice or something like that. We don't often offer it as a service, but you know, this kind of stuff comes up all the time. Right. So what do you do this week?
Speaker: Today, I've got a busy day of testing out those code tweaks I made last night about the blade probing on the sides, um, a couple other little things, and we're trying to bang out.
Speaker: Like we're building up inventory from the lathe right now so that we can stop using the lathe for knife stuff. We're on our last part now, we're making screws, but there's seven screws per knife. Whereas everything else, there's like one screw per knife. So it takes a long time. Like we want to make 3000 screws, which will - Holy cow. It's going to be a lot of running.
Speaker: These are the screws that are the Torx head that go through the handles. Got it. One, two, three, four. Do I have four on my knife? Is that right? Seven. Five, because it holds in the button. And two in the clip. Oh, those are hidden to me, though. Interesting. I should take mine apart soon, actually. You can clean it. It was cool when I was at that auction. Across the street, somebody was like,
Speaker: Do you have your Norseman? Can I hold it? Can I hold it? I'm like, yeah, of course, I don't care. Did they all use the same threading insert? Yeah, they're all the same screw. So setting up the machine isn't that bad. You can do it once for all seven? Yep.
Speaker: More or less. We're just making a multiple. But even quick math, 3 ,000 divided by 7, that's 400 knives, 428. We're kind of building up a 300 to 400 inventory of some of the other stuff. So we've never made 3 ,000. Right. But the late can run all day, all night, right? Yeah, problem.
Speaker: It's got to get fair. Exactly. All day, no problem. All night. It's like a six and a bit hour run. Yeah. So I was going to come in last night at 11 and put another bar in, but I just ended up working till 2 instead. Yeah. Right. Yeah, I blame you on that. That's exciting, though. So then is it saga time? Then it's saga. Realistically, I don't know if we're going to hit 3 ,000 because I'm just thinking about that.
Speaker: I think we can make 300, like three ish hundred and a day. Um, oh, it's like 10 days or more of hard running. I mean, that's not bad if it's, if you've got time in the world and stuff, but you know, we're all going to take some time off during Christmas and things are going to quiet down here basically for the rest of the year. Come next week. Um, yeah, right.
Speaker: Angelo and I kind of want to come in that Thursday, Friday, and make pens. So we'll see how far we can get. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Or keep the bar. I mean, I enjoy this, like legit. I enjoy like, oh, it's not Christmas day, maybe, but like around the holidays, then things are quiet or something. Just come in once or twice a day and just put a new bar in, right? Yeah, that's my plan.
Speaker: Who are we talking? I feel like you were with me. We're talking to somebody who they have their machine programmed. So when it's done machining, it still does spindle and machine movements. I think Miltara was telling us that. Just to keep it moving. Yeah, isn't that awesome? Yeah, it makes so much sense. Like the coolant is still flowing and everything's just moving really slow and keeping it warm. And I've heard that from people too.
Speaker: I think if we keep spraying coolant, we're just going to evaporate all of our coolant in no time at all. But you don't have to spray coolant. It helps keep everything casting and everything all kind of homogenously temperature. But you should be. So you could turn the spindle at a low RPM and you could have the coolant turn on for five seconds every minute or two. That'll still circulate, but not evaporate. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker: But I've got the probe on there that kind of compensates for any thermal anyway, so I don't need to keep it warm all the time. Right. Man, I feel like 2019 needs to include a Swiss lathe for you. I agree. I want to prove it. I want to prove the purchase. I want it to be an absolute no -brainer with some good money in the bank to make it a no -brainer.
Speaker: The latter I agree with, but you already have, John. I mean, you have made, you've made money with Norseman and you've made Norseman. You know how to make a screw. You know, you need that. Oh, absolutely. I mean, this is not a, we're going to test the waters. No, but it's. We're going to start insourcing.
Speaker: Spending two hundred and fifty thousand dollars on a CNC lead to make more screws. I've already done that you know Say again, I spending two hundred fifty thousand dollars to make screws. I've already done that with this machine There's not the yeah, but this machine Is that this is gonna become the saga machine slash right other stuff my point is once we're selling sagas and they're like kind of in somewhat regular production and
Speaker: And we're looking at this lathe going, guys, it's running full time and we could make so many more sagas and knife parts with the secondary Swiss, then it just makes more sense. I hear you. I think, look, I admire the caution and wanting to prove it to yourself. Here I feel like
Speaker: You got to be careful. If you don't have sagas out in March, in June, are people going to just sort of say, oh, that was interesting? I mean, I don't think they'll still sell. They're still freaking awesome pen. But like, John, yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, I want to sell them. I get it. You don't want to justify spending a quarter million dollars on an unproven product, blah, blah, blah. But it's not really like that. No, I agree. It's not really like that. I just kind of want to do it first. I mean, good grief. You could even just be just like, OK, so what you're doing is analyzing downside risk. Well, so lots of ways to think about that. Number one, you can buy a used machine, reduced capital outlay. You could buy a less fancy Swiss because this is just going to be turning some of the smaller parts. Maybe it doesn't need to do anything.
Speaker: and everything and live tooling and blah, blah, blah. You can think about your ability to make more Norseman, more rasks, maybe even a third knife product if pens really flop. You can go back to just more hustle. I mean, not that you don't hustle now, but like, if you really have to make it work, you can be working harder, longer to make ends. I mean, like, this is, I say the American dream. I don't mean to offend you as a Canadian, but like, this is how you do it, right?
Speaker: I want to buy another machine tool in 2019. I really want to. And I started to have an idea what that might be. And I'm sort of thinking that phrase that growth eats cash for breakfast. And so you're like, how do you plan for this responsibly? How do you justify the same things you do, like the same feelings you do?
Speaker: You're the same thing. You want to make more fixture plates. You want to have more variety, another spindle to be able to put another setup on. So just like you told me last week, you're like, I think we'll get another VM3. And then the week before that, you're like, I think we'll get another VF2. I know. It's part of the process. I appreciate sharing it with you. The conviction has become clear every week, every day.
Speaker: And on the same thing, one of the reasons is we want to separate two of our ops and not have to do set up times. That's pretty basic machining growth strategies. Yeah.
Speaker: But we've got to stay responsible on it. What you said reminds me of something. I was going through the knife numbers and we engraved the serial number on every knife. And I saw, you know, 1774. And I'm like, wait, 1776, it's got to be next. Like American independence.
Speaker: So yeah, it's like that's now. That's a good one. Right. So that just occurred to me like two days ago. And we all chatted about it real quick. And we're like, we've got to do something special. Oh, my gosh. As Canadians, maybe we don't care as much. But God, these Americans are going to go nuts. So yeah, we're doing that. But that's awesome. It's epic.
Speaker: Yes. I want full America with a apostrophe M -U -R -I -C -A. Yeah. Preferably a bald eagle twin dual -fisting M -16s or something. That's awesome. Yeah, it'll be good. Cool. So what's your plan over the next?
Speaker: to the next 10 days of the year? Full week this week, next week I'll probably work, I'll probably come in little bits to keep the lathe running like you said. Yeah. Probably work Thursday, Friday. And then that's about it. I mean, as the chief boss, man, I'm going to always tinker around on my computer and stuff.
Speaker: Wow, that really is it. So the year is over a week from today for the folks listening, a week from Friday. Wow. That went fast. Wow, yeah. That's all right though, you know? Yeah. It's like November was our most killer month ever. And then we just realized December's, it just can't match it because there's so much Christmas at the end. And that's okay, like that's totally fine.
Speaker: Right, right. I keep that in mind about what we like. I was thinking about the Johnny Five thing. I'm like, ah, you know, I actually do hope it will grow the enthusiasm. I don't even care about the stats. I guess I care a little bit about the stats on YouTube. I care more about the enthusiasm. And like, as we've been posting the Johnny Five stuff on Instagram, people are like, this is awesome. We're excited. And that gets exciting for me. Like, I actually love that.
Speaker: sharing that story of folks, but uh, you know, that's not going to necessarily be the Maximum profit use of my time in our shop and our machine tools, but I don't care like I care in the sense that I want to buy that next machine So you're thinking okay, I need to it's kind of funny I'm almost like I need to sell fixture plates to justify things like Johnny five and all that but it's a little bit of a
Speaker: It's funny because I've heard people say, oh, so you run a lifestyle business. And I'm like, oh, I think I take offense to that, right? Yeah, I could see that. I don't think most people would call me the lifestyle business kind of guy. I mean, I might. But you're like the bootstrapper entrepreneur DIY lifestyle kind of guy.
Speaker: Well and like to me that screams somebody like Tim Ferriss where it's like I need to make sure I can surf four days a week so my outsourced decision making to my people. That's nothing wrong with that but if I offload something it's because I'm picking up a new responsibility and task and love what I do. But then it's like well I shouldn't take offense to that. I mean the truth is the opposite of a lifestyle business may be something where you're, and I think about this sometimes. I think it's corporate or something.
Speaker: Well, yeah, or just like I could raise a bunch of money. I mean, if we really think that fixture plates are an opportunity to revolutionize the use of machine tools and work holding, we could be hiring PR folks and trade shows and marketing teams and buy, you know, full bore going decking the shop out with equipment to make fixture plates and really like, you know,
Speaker: tooling up in a lot of different ways. And good grief, you could spend $2 million in the blink of an eye. And honestly, you could probably write a business plan that could make that look like a favorite outcome. That's not me. That's where you pull back into it, being a lifestyle business of my belief as an entrepreneur, my decision to how I want to run and scale and grow this business, and doing what I love. Anyways.
Speaker: On that note, we're playing around today. We're not super happy with one of our suppliers. It's been a long -term thing and we've been very careful to judge that in a factual and not an emotional reaction. And the truth is, I don't know if we can leave them, but we've got some stuff in today from somebody else to start slowly figuring out
Speaker: if that's going to make sense, which I'm excited, I'm cautiously excited about. And it's not as a stick it to the old guy, but I think the other folks don't think that. I think they kind of think they've got us over a barrel. And again, it's not that it's not a toxic relationship, but it's not something I want to grow. And so I want to figure out a way to do this better differently. So it's good. Good. Yeah. It's it's funny how you get so kind of set in your ways. You're like, oh, that's our vendor and they're not doing so good. Oh, well.
Speaker: So you can either try to guide them or I've done that too. I've tried other water jet places I've tried other all these things and Eventually eventually you find someone that's great and you're like what what if I've been missing all my life, right?
Speaker: Well, in good grief, I cannot, like of all the things we've gone through in this podcast this year, your thought about the conversation, the Safina transaction falling out, and then talking to your disc grinding, double disc shop, and then getting a print, and then thinking about how do I tolerance that print? What's important? You know, how do I make sure we all win?
Speaker: When you boil it down, this is actually a one -page case study that sounds very like if an MBA student's reading this, they're like, well, obviously that's what I would have done. Well, let me tell you about it. When you're in the shoes, it's not that obvious. No, exactly. Right? Yeah.
Speaker: You know, maybe that's what we should do, I don't know how much time you have between now and when we record next week, but maybe for our own edification and for our viewers, maybe next week we can try to, maybe I'll spend, excuse me, a few minutes looking through some of the descriptions of the old podcasts from this year and you do the same and let's talk about maybe what we think are good takeaways and kind of like rereading the book, you know, like it's good to kind of,
Speaker: the description should make it pretty easy to think about because good grief i don't remember what you and i were stressing about in march or april or i was thinking this just two days ago and i was like but but i know there was stuff yeah let's do that you okay with that yeah absolutely okay so i'll spend a few minutes you do the same and the next week our year -end
Speaker: episode 99 wrapping up 2018 will be kind of a and if you guys want if you guys are Out there listening if you want to shoot us emails Or whatever. I don't think Grimms was as easy to get a hold of as I am
Speaker: But folks can reach me at john at sauntersmachineworks .com. And if you guys want to chime in on stuff that was impactful for you, we've already heard a ton of feedback from folks about really, really crazy good ways about how the podcast has helped them. And manufacturing and entrepreneurship can be lonely and things can be tough. But I know we certainly love it. And this year has certainly been, I think, a very good year for both of us. I'm certainly grateful for how it's turned out.
Speaker: Yeah, I was thinking about what would I have been stressing about last year? And I'm like, I've hired three people like this year. I've almost doubled the size of my business since February. Well, and if I recall, John, the end of last year was a pretty low point for you. Not to dwell on it, but that was like, you were really struggling, I think, with some cashflow and machine disusing product and just stuff. Yep, yep. And look how that's turned around. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker: Yep. Dude, good for you. Thank you. Good. Well, let's have a fun recap next week. It'll be good. Looking forward to it. Cool. All right. Well, for everyone else out there, happy holidays and Merry Christmas. We'll see you next week. Later, everyone. Bye. Thanks, guys. I'll see you.
