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Hot Rods & Edgebanders with Brian from RT Machine Co.
59 Plays2 years ago
This week we had a great conversation with Brian from RT Machine Co. We'll definitely have to continue this convo in future episodes.
What will be the newest machine in the Greene Street Joinery shop? Tune in to find out.
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Transcript
Introduction of Brian Creeling and RT Machine Company
00:00:21
Speaker
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the show. Yeah. We have another guest this week. Yeah. We're rolling in guests. Yeah. We went from none for, I don't know what, two and a half years maybe. Yeah. Something like that. To about one every week for the last little bit. Yeah. We got some good guests too. Yeah.
00:00:45
Speaker
So with us today, we have our our new friend, Brian Creeling. I say that right. Yep. From R.T. Machinery machinery, machine company. Yeah. And they're in Hughesville, Pennsylvania. That's it. Yeah.
00:01:01
Speaker
So we were just talking about Brian's Hot Rod Shop, which we're going to get back to. Yeah, we'll circle back.
Sponsor Acknowledgment: Hayfla
00:01:11
Speaker
But first we want to thank our sponsor, Hayfla. Hayfla offers a wide range of products and solutions for the woodworking and furniture making industries from hinges and drawer slides to connectors and dowels.
00:01:21
Speaker
Sandpaper, wood glue, shop carts, and everything in between. Exclusive product lines such as Lux LED lighting and Slido door hardware ensure that every project you create is built to last. Learn more at Hayfla.com. Is that website up and running? It is. We had it. We actually, our order, our order went through. So Rich, Rich hooked it up. All right. Hayfla had a little bit of trouble over there in Germany in their home country.
00:01:49
Speaker
It was a big debt, like a ransomware attack. They were shut down for like three weeks. We were pretty fortunate. We had, hopefully had a warehouse, literally 20 minutes from our shop. So we, we would get stuff instantly, which was super nice. Oh yeah. Yeah. Even here, a lot of stuff, if it comes from that Harrisburg or whatever it is, it's like the next day, even in the North Carolina is pretty fast. Sweet.
RT Machine Company and Oliver Rights
00:02:16
Speaker
So yeah, I was going to say, tell us what RT machine company is. Well, RT machine company is, uh, we're actually North America's biggest used equipment dealer. Uh, and then we're new equipment. We have quite an umbrella of new equipment that we sell and a full service of all makes. And, uh, we actually read condition.
00:02:40
Speaker
just about anything. And then we recently bought all the rights to Oliver Machine Company. Really? I saw that. From 1999 back to 1907, we actually have all the birth certificates, everything for every machine that ever went out. We have all the tooling, all the parts, we have all the foundry. Wow.
00:03:03
Speaker
That's the good Oliver. Yeah, it is. We do. We do a lot. We just there's great on the site right now. We just finished up a really nice bandsaw that was a full recondition and we can take other people's wheels and whatnot and re-rubber them.
00:03:18
Speaker
and just about anything in between with them. So, you know, it's, it's been a very nice add on to the whole umbrella. Yeah. Well, we have that, I guess that's a 2000. Yeah. It's like the first year when they went over to Taiwan. Yeah. Um, and it's been, it's, you know, it needs a little tune up now since we moved, but it's been good. We bought a, the 20 inch planer must've been what, two years ago, that thing was horrible. We sent it back. It was a lemon. Yeah. It, uh,
00:03:45
Speaker
It had so much deflection in the head that you could physically see it, you know, moving when you ran a piece through. Oh, wow. Yeah. And the customer service wasn't so responsive. Yeah. Oh, we have the shaper. Yeah, we have an Oliver shaper. We were going to go full on Oliver, but you know, it was we couldn't we couldn't. Yeah. Couldn't get the results. Yeah. The newer stuff is a little bit different.
00:04:13
Speaker
Definitely. It's just the same factories as Grizzly, Empowermatic, and it's just the same thing. A lot of it's all coming from it. Similar, just depends on who has the best quality control.
00:04:25
Speaker
Right. Yeah. You know, maybe this bearing on the Powermatics a little bit better or this, you know, the Oliver might be slightly better than the jet or whatever, you know, right. The price point on the Oliver, too, it's like a little bit it's higher than all of those similar machines on a lot of stuff. But then the quality doesn't seem to be there. Well, they definitely have heavy castings. I mean, that's one thing with them that they're. It's definitely given a midge on that side.
00:04:53
Speaker
Yeah. What was it? The drill press or the band saw? The band saw was, oh man. Well, a lot of it's too. It's on, you know, who you're buying from, you know, and the support with it. Well, that sort of leads us into how we met and why you're here and everything as sort of like a new part of our friend and family circle.
00:05:16
Speaker
Yeah, Lou said, hey, I got a buddy over here that's having some edge band or issues and no sooner I was at their shop and.
00:05:26
Speaker
Jeff called me and I said, Hey, I'll be over there about a half hour today. That was great. Yeah. Fire that machine up. I'll be over. So it's one of the, I think unique, uh, advantages that we have at
Brian Creeling's Woodworking Background
00:05:40
Speaker
RT. We have a big umbrella of technicians and, and my background, you know, obviously I, I had my own shop for 40 years and we just wound down at the end of the year. And so I've been there from the very beginning of just doing a couple of man shop.
00:05:56
Speaker
growing all the way up to over a hundred band shop and running high production lines and case work and closet systems. And we did a shindler elevator for all North America. So we had a couple of elevator lines just running for that. So, and anything that was a custom laminated product we handled. So quite the umbrella that we did.
00:06:19
Speaker
Yeah. Well, we saw some of the equipment, you know, got an outside dust collector, 40 feet tall. And you know, it's the stuff that everybody dreams of, of running, you know, all these big, big, big machines. Um, yeah, we just did two, um, really nice rebuilds for O'Shea lumber. Oh, really? So they had, uh, Oliver Stratoplanes and, uh, we pulled one out, took it to the shop.
00:06:47
Speaker
Did a complete rebuild. We put that one back in. Took the other one back. Did a complete rebuild and they're up and running. Both are planers full speed again. So the Stratoplane is a double sided planer? Correct. Yeah. Yeah. We've we had wood that has gone through those machines. I'm sure. Thousands of board feet probably. Typically we don't typically we just buy a rough but.
00:07:10
Speaker
Like that walnut that's in there we had that you know surface two sides and SLR just because yeah 12 footers on a on an 80-inch bed Joiner is not Not gonna happen easily.
RT's Service and Relationship Building
00:07:24
Speaker
Yeah. Well, we got people that listen all from all over the world and but we do have a circle of friends and stuff like that that are regional and We want to just say, you know as like a kind of a shameless plug
00:07:39
Speaker
you know, give you guys a call or whatever, if you need anything, because that's kind of what impressed us. That's what, you know, sort of built this relationship. We had that edge band was crapping out. You were over here with your head in the edge band. There were no questions asked. No, nothing. Just, you know, hands dirty. Yeah. And in 30 seconds it was putting on edge banding. You know, we struggled to try and get it to do just that. Um,
00:08:10
Speaker
So yeah, I mean, it's, it's indispensable to have. Well, that's what we're hoping to really bring to the plate. You know, we have, we have a couple other salesmen were texts as well. So going out in the field, they know exactly what to dive into. And of course a lot of heavy panel processing is, was a lot of my background. Uh, not so much as a hardwoods, we did a little bit of stuff in the hardwoods, but most everything was pre-milled and then we did assembly, you know, things like that.
00:08:39
Speaker
It's getting a machine like an edge bander. There's a lot going on. There is. As everybody sort of attests to, there can be a little finicky even, you know, right off the boat. The biggest $700,000 machine, they're edge banders when it comes down to it. It's just, you know, how much you want to run through them.
00:09:03
Speaker
I mean, some of those monsters like the EMA that we sell through shelling and they're just incredible. They spit parts out so fast that it's, but very high production. Well, that's sort of what we were saying. What do we do? You know, like you are a big component of why we went with the, I appreciate the machine, you know, the season and everything like that. Cause well, I was dealing with Sohisa. Uh, I think our first he said we put in in like 94.
00:09:33
Speaker
And we had used these big old tanks that were called SCM B4Ls. And we used to just run a lot of this big heavy inch and a half countertop work. And they were perfect for that. But trying to take that machine down to a melamine, they just weren't designed to do. They were heavy. They could actually apply a three quarter thick wood edge. Yeah. We actually used to use those bases and we would build other custom equipment.
00:10:02
Speaker
out of those bases just because it had such rigidity. I think I saw something. Yeah, we built one. It was like a single partial double end tenor had one side saw blades and router was coming into one side and then an adjustable saw blade on the outside. And I don't think people understood what it was in the auction.
00:10:25
Speaker
doing and the guy that actually came to pick it up and he goes, this, I can do a lot of stuff with this. Cause they were, he was basically, you know, just sizing and you know, you could control the track speed and everything on it. So you could, you could tail that thing down to whatever you wanted to do with it. So it was.
00:10:43
Speaker
We have a buddy, Matt Viz. He's up in Connecticut and he has a couple of these like machines that some guy built. He's got like a double up cut saw. So it just, you know, cuts, trims both ends and he's in a, he's in a, I shouldn't call it a small shop, but small shop compared to a shop like yours, like a 2,500 square foot shop, but he's got that. He's got, um,
00:11:09
Speaker
Was he have that shaper that he's got a couple of shapers that you know were you know built from scratch basically like sliding table shapers and stuff that I just made you know yeah yeah whatever you can dream up
00:11:24
Speaker
we've actually modified and done. That's cool. It's like a shaper and then it bores for dowels or something too. Or maybe that's the, that maybe that's the double, double cut saw. I think it cuts both ends and then it comes in and drills dowels. Yeah. Yeah, we do. The, uh, the FroMac line, we do quite a bit of that type of work because it's, it can stepper it.
00:11:48
Speaker
So depending on what the parts are, we basically build those machines from whatever the job's gonna do for it. So yeah, RT's, it's a nice family run business. Ron and Eric are the main and my son actually runs the service division. So he takes care of all the, we have a rigging company within it. So we can do full setup rig equipment out.
00:12:16
Speaker
set everything up. We've moved plants for people. So that's another good resource.
Networking in Woodworking
00:12:23
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Because when we bought these machines, you know, we were like, what the hell do we do about rigging? We just, we call rigger. I mean, rigger turned out to be very expensive and really not, not necessary because IRS just loaded those for us, but
00:12:43
Speaker
Yeah. You know, a one stop shop is especially for guys like us. Um, we don't have, we don't want to waste the time trying to figure out all of these different steps of something. We can go to somebody that can help coordinate everything. Then that's take my heartache and adapt it to your business. Here's, here's what not to do. I am at this and I am at that.
00:13:10
Speaker
There's value there. Yeah. Yeah. That's what I'm hoping to bring to everybody. You know, I'm straight shooter and yeah, that was obvious. Yeah. Um, you know, cause like I said, you came in here, you worked on the machine, didn't hand us a bill. Well, it's building trust, building relationships. That's what it's all about. You know, it's not just the next machine to sell. It's what makes the most sense for what your business is doing.
00:13:36
Speaker
Right. And yeah, you know, we operate the same way where, you know, if we're if we're at someone's house and they're like, you know, this door over here, something that we didn't even do is it's not closing, you know, take 15 minutes and fix it. You know, it's just it's part of building relationships with your clients.
00:13:54
Speaker
I used to drive my wife nuts every time we go to doctor's offices, restaurants, and I'm underneath opening the cab. She said, get the hell out of the damn cabinets. I said, I want to see how they put it together. Where'd you get that? Fuzzy drive. See that? That's why they got the job. They were doing, they saved all that money on that hardware. Yeah. Oh yeah. Well, that's always the name of the game is finding out what
00:14:21
Speaker
where you can cut corners or not cut corners or make it value added. You know that. We've been trying to do that more and more. Yeah. And it's, it's difficult. I think with the network of shops that you guys have too, you know, the more guys network together, you know, utilizing the strengths of other shops, you know, there might be somebody that's, you know, used to banging boxes together. You might have a job that, you know, we did it for years.
00:14:49
Speaker
You know, yeah, we'd send something off to a big cat. We had a lot of boxes and then we did all the customs, you know, and we made sure it was our spec and we did it that way to, you know, to work into it. Yeah. Yeah. We're thinking, you know, with the edge bander.
00:15:04
Speaker
Since, you know, we're not going to be running it a full shift every day. Right. Offer edge-banding service. You know, if somebody local, like somebody like the position that we used to be in in the old shop where we didn't have room for an edge-bander. Right. We would have gladly brought it to somebody edge-banded and then leave with edge-banded parts, you know. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I think that's a great value to push out there.
00:15:30
Speaker
Talking about networking, we got that Domino DF-700 from our buddy Corey at CT Woodwork. We needed this thing, this tool that we don't have. And we said, doesn't Corey have that?
00:15:47
Speaker
We had it here, yeah, and about 20 hours later it showed up on our, on the doorstep. Texted a message to them on Instagram actually. Hey, are you thirsty? Why don't you come over with a beer and bring that Domino shit? He's in Patchogue, Long Island. We sent him a shipping label and he got here like lunchtime today. Oh, nice. Yeah. Yeah. And that's what, you know, really makes it nice when you have a network of people to work with. Yeah. Yeah.
00:16:11
Speaker
Plus they get to see if is it going to work for what we're doing in the future too. Right. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Corey's got a can tech, uh, eight foot slider. I think he said it was coming Tuesday, but then it got to later. Yeah. Yeah.
00:16:27
Speaker
Yeah, he's got a nice shop out in Patchogue, so if you're ever out that far... Probably hitting them up. Yeah, drop by. Drop by. I'm the new guy in Jersey and New York. He's like us, he's got expensive taste. He's like, send me this Martin planer. He's like, I really want this planer, but it's $44,000. I'm like, yeah, me too. Yeah, that's always a tough challenge, is where to put your capital that makes the most sense. Yeah. You know, it really does.
00:16:56
Speaker
Yeah. Well, we're hoping the edge banner opens up a whole different avenue for us as far as, you know, do you're going to, you're going to wonder, how did we get along without it is, is going to be the next big thing. And you're already thinking about it too, is, you know, bringing other guys in to help them out. Yeah.
00:17:16
Speaker
And, you know, part of the whole move was pivoting the business a little bit to try and pick up some of these more, you know, Euro style kitchens and commercial millwork to supplement, you know, stuff like that yellow cabinet in there. It's there's a big price tag on it, but the profit margin is it's nowhere near a commercial millwork job. Right. So to to supplement what keeps us happy, basically, you have to take on these jobs that are, you know, they're less technical and less
00:17:45
Speaker
challenging but the profit margins better. Well, I think the first day I was in here, you talked about the jobs that feed the soul and the jobs that pay the bills. Finding that happy balance. It's like the starving artist thing. You want to make the art you want to make and live in some dirty basement in Brooklyn or you're going to do that too and then you take on the commissions. That's not exactly what you want to do, but you got to do what you got to do.
00:18:13
Speaker
I always
Brian's Passion for Hot Rods and Cars
00:18:14
Speaker
had that problem. If I didn't like it, I'd tear it apart, redo it. So have you always been taking things apart and putting them back together? Oh, yeah. Yeah. The funny thing is my dad ran another business for 27 years before we started craling. And so I grew up literally in that shop. And we actually did post-form blanks as well. So we had full post-forming lines. And as a little kid, I was hanging out in those lines
00:18:41
Speaker
You know, hey, let me do that. Let me do that. You know, motor mouth, you know, and it was nice because all the guys, you know, and then I was cleaning the shop and stuff over there. I actually started work for my dad at 11. So and I worked three days a week at that shop and then we we started craling. And so that's I was basically on home table saws at eight years old.
00:19:03
Speaker
And yeah, my dad was still got 10 digits. Yeah. Well, my dad was pretty cautious with that. You know, we had, you know, it was one of these, the little home saw was, I think my grandfather's old, old, I think it was maybe from the thirties craftsman, you know, the, the combo joiner table, you know, uh, what else was on that thing?
00:19:25
Speaker
What else is there? Does it have a lathe on it too? That one didn't have a lathe. That one was, I think we just had the, I had a sander. So you had the table saw, jointer, and a sander off the side. All one motor. So we always built, you know, remote control stuff.
00:19:42
Speaker
So I was always doing that kind of thing at home. And then, you know, obviously when I got to school, I was a little, I was already used to working in, you know, the wood shop and doing all this stuff. So I diverted over to metal. Yeah. So in, in high school I did basically full machining, welding, everything like that. So my, my, uh, love for cars and motorcycles just kind of stayed with me through all that, uh,
00:20:10
Speaker
Yeah. Is that how you got into hot rods and stuff like that? Yep. And then, uh, once upon a time I dated a girl who's her father, most guys wouldn't know, but it's called Posey's hot rods. And, uh, he was pretty well-known builder. Wow. And, uh, so I got to hang out at their shop, you know, while I was still motorhead and stuff like that and learn, learn my body working skills and some of this stuff, you know, from them, most of it's, it's, it's patience.
00:20:38
Speaker
You know, it was funny. I'd go in there and one guy Bryce, I go, man, I'm just beating my head. I got this door panel and, you know, going into this quarter panel and he just looked there and could see this door right here. I got 40 hours.
00:20:50
Speaker
I said, I got it. All right. I turned around and walked out because it basically what he was telling you is it took patience in your hands and feeling it. And, uh, and I've been always kind of a wide open throttle kind of guy. And my wife would always say, I don't know why you like to do bodywork. That's like I said, because I can see the end picture, you know, going to that finished product laying down, you know, as a paint. So that's what always just kept me going.
00:21:17
Speaker
So what'd you drive in high school? No, I had I had an old some bill that I wrecked. We were all leaving work one night. And of course, we are. We all worked at my dad's shop and it was like a racetrack leaving the parking lot at night. Everybody like burning down the highway, you know, because we all lived out in the same neighborhood, too. So, you know, we're 10 mile race, you know, home every night, which we had a good time.
00:21:45
Speaker
pouring down rain, the girl pulled right across both lanes of traffic and my buddy was in front of me, he saw her, put the brakes on, I slammed right in there. So from that point, I was doing pickup trucks and that kind of stuff, motocross. And then, you know, and then the hot rods came with, I did a lot of drag racing too. So it was
00:22:06
Speaker
We ran a nostalgic circuit for quite a while. I had a 63 front engine dragster full body deal, which we did. And 65 fastback Mustang. So that was my nostalgic tour. But I always had to build everything. I never had the bankroll. So that's how I had to learn. So I couldn't write the check for it. I had to figure out how to do it. We were married young, had kids young.
00:22:34
Speaker
You know, so here I am trying to hang with guys that are 10 years older than me and figure out how I got to do it. And that's really how my skill set developed was just.
00:22:46
Speaker
I just was relentless, you know, and it was nothing to be up, still painting, you know, midnight, one o'clock in the morning. My neighbor would come knocking on the door. Did you leave your fans on? No, I'm still working, Jim. Sorry, I'll be done. Please don't fire that car up tonight in the garage. So you were loved tonight. Oh, yeah. It was funny.
00:23:14
Speaker
My brother-in-law, he had a friend that lived right up the street and he goes, your brother-in-law is the loudest freaking house in the neighborhood. So, yeah, it was a lot of fun. Yeah, bikes too. I did. I had quite a bit of choppers and baggers and stuff. And my poor wife, I would put her on these custom 18 over springers, little pillion pad on the back with, you know, sissy bar.
00:23:40
Speaker
I used to run. I was always a speed freak, so I always had like big stroker motors, 113s and stuff and you know.
00:23:48
Speaker
belt drive systems, you know, so I could really hook up and go. And I always ran race field on these damn things. So I pulled, you know, we'd go to car cruises and that, and I would take a chopper down and stuff, you know, if I didn't have a car ready to go and, and, uh, guys will pull up beside me and go, what the hell do you got in that thing? Cause red light to red light, man, they didn't have nothing on that bike. But yeah, my buddies, they go, I don't know why she, she just sits on that pilling pad and we go, you know, go bar hopping or what have you. And, and, uh,
00:24:18
Speaker
She goes, well, I can sit at home. She's a good sport. Let me tell her I can. So she endured that for a while. And then it was funny. I got a good line on a ultra classic.
00:24:30
Speaker
So I, uh, I picked this ultra classic up already had all the motor work done to it and I lucked out pretty good. So I'm taking her for a test drive. We're going up this mountain and we're running 80 mile an hour up the mountain. She's back there with her diet coke and a bag of chips and she don't even know we're doing 80 mile an hour. She, she loved that bike. Yeah. That one I took, I had 12 inch heaps and stuff on that thing. Oh man. Yeah. Bunch of us all drove out to, uh, Sturgis that one year, 2010, it was,
00:24:58
Speaker
That was definitely soothing the soul ride.
Woodworking Meets Hot Rod Building
00:25:04
Speaker
I came home by myself and ran an iron button 22 and a half hours. So that was...
00:25:12
Speaker
I had a hard time sitting in the van going to the Hamptons for three hours. My back still hurts. So yeah, my buddies had a nice bike shop and they were in a lot of the magazines and I was the painter, body man, welder, and I'd get a little blip because my shop was called BK Rods.
00:25:31
Speaker
And BK Rods did the, you know, half of a sentence, you know, like you fuckers. There's a lot of crossover in like the woodworking to like hot rods and motorcycles. I feel like guys like Keith, you know, he's big into cars and a bunch of trucks and Manny, you know, guys like that. People like to build stuff and get their hands dirty and create.
00:25:54
Speaker
It is. It's, it's a lot of fun and I've always found it relaxing. And of course the kids always drew hot rods in school and stuff. So we were, we were the oddity, you know, everybody was running the Toyotas and Hondas and stuff. I built this, uh, Oh, was those tuna cars? Yeah. Well, that's not me. Yeah, but I'm still hot rod side, but the kids, my, my kids, you know, and, uh,
00:26:24
Speaker
that we built for my daughter. She was 15. We built a little F-150, 1980 step side short bed. I slammed it on the ground and put a nice little roller motor in it. I literally built the whole thing out of a junkyard. So like I was just slapping parts together because we were always at the junkyards, scrounging parts and stuff.
00:26:45
Speaker
And she helped do everything in that. And I didn't give her any gears. She got no real gear. She had like 275s. I put a stall converter in it under the C6 and it was a Mustang roller motor. So it sounded good, you know, and pretty funny story. So I get this thing on the road and she's driving hell out of it. She, I don't know who knows how many miles she put on this darn thing. But she ran out of gas a couple times.
00:27:11
Speaker
So then I was like, that's it. So I dropped the fuel tank and I moved the sending unit up. So when it hit empty, I knew she had at least six gallons of gas. And so like shortly after the, the flex, I had the wrong starter in it and the Bendix wasn't going out the whole way. So it pitched up the flex plate.
00:27:31
Speaker
And I was like, look, I don't have time to yank the transmission. So I run up the Harbor Freight, get this socket set in a breaker bar and you're going to have to crawl under the hood and turn it till you get a good spot. So Herner, Herner friend, Kelsey, they pull in one day. They had this little place called Salters Mini Market and Ice Cream Spot and stuff. Oh, yeah. We've seen those places. Yeah. And Herner and Kelsey are in there, these two little blondes, you know, and and the truck wouldn't start. There's a couple of guys hanging out at the door and
00:28:01
Speaker
And they're like laughing and being dicks, basically, you know? Man, it pops up, pops a hood, comes out with a breaker bar. Kelsey slides over into the thing. Man, it crawls under there, gives it a quarter turn. Zing, it's still zinging. Quarter turn again, fires up. And I told her, I said, anytime that thing fires up that, you give that sucker at least three good raps. Rawr, you know?
00:28:22
Speaker
Slams a hood, Kelsey pops over, Amanda gets in, and they said the boys faces were just like on the floor and didn't know what to do. They're like, I don't even know how to change a tire. It's like when we got a flat in a van. Oh man. Yeah, my son, he was like, we were working on a 56 Ford for him. We chopped it and everything, truck. And he was pretty knee deep in that.
00:28:46
Speaker
my brother-in-law had this jet boat. And Derek used to mow grass on these islands. We were big boaters, so we were always down there. He goes, dad, you know, I think I'd like to buy that jet boat. I'm like, well, yeah, I've got to deal with it. And let's bring it. I mean, it had trees grown out of it. I mean, it was rough, you know, are kind of special, you know. So we ended up putting a big block together for it. Scrounge parts at the Carlisle products and stuff like that.
00:29:14
Speaker
we, uh, so he got that on the water when he was 15. Cause even the new drivers lights. Yeah. So he's got this big block Chevy and we did all this custom metal flake paint work on it. It was called the alcoholic. So it was like, yeah. So I kind of brought those guys up in right in with all the hot rod stuff. Do you have anything in the garage now?
00:29:35
Speaker
I still have my daughter's truck that we actually switched when she blew the motor up. We switched everything to big block because we were always big block Ford guys. So we actually that's in there. It's got to be put back together, but it's all ready to go. Motors built and everything's and.
00:29:53
Speaker
We kept my, uh, Derek's chopper. Right now I don't have any money. My buddy's just bugging the shit out of me. He's like, Caroline, what are you going to do your own car again? And to be honest with you, it took the wind out of my sails. I was running the main plant, trying to run the hot rod shop. It was the worst thing I ever did. I should have never brought it into the main business because I was, you know, it was one thing the wife never minded when I was out in the garage till midnight, but I was at home.
00:30:19
Speaker
But up here, now I'm at the shop still. I got at the shop at six in the morning and I'm still at the shop at midnight. So that was the hard part. And then you couldn't get guys, just like everybody's dealing with today. Guys that can do everything, it's very difficult. Yeah, and guys that can do stuff, guys that show up, guys that have the right attitude. Yeah, we did some pretty high profile projects.
00:30:48
Speaker
It was called the Tuner Challenge with Scion Toyota. And we pitted an East Coast build against Midwest and West Coast guys. And we had a build group, basically. I did all the interior work and we had a guy did all the body kits and the paint. Then we had, there was a special guy, I can't remember their name, DC area. They actually had, they built a custom one-off supercharger for this thing. And so we get the SEMA.
00:31:17
Speaker
and there was it was in a couple of things so the tuner challenge so we smacked that out of the park and won the tuner challenge with that really and yeah the west coast boys didn't like it because who's all these no-name guys you know out in the east coast here that just like smoked them and then then we won hottest sport compact of sema
00:31:39
Speaker
And then we were in like the top 20 because we had custom wheels we built too. And so it was pretty neat. Then we did a thing for an E-Judge app, which was a Ford Transit van. So Ford Transit van got dropped off right from Ford at my shop. And we did this complete custom diamond stitch interior for this. And there was all these crazy electronics and stuff that were in it for the E-Judge app. The E-Judge app was like a
00:32:05
Speaker
They go to take it to car shows and it's real time judging when all the judges are out, you know, walking the car. So I was pretty neat. I did some drifting cars that went out there the following year at SEMA. So we had a pretty good presence. You know, I had a lot of, a lot of guys in the industry that were, you know, were newest and trusted us with stuff. So what's like your dream, dream build, dream car?
00:32:33
Speaker
You know, I think I almost did it with my dragster.
00:32:37
Speaker
The dragster was a labor of love, all one piece aluminum body. You know, it was the real deal. We, of course we had to do update the chassis a little bit, you know, but a nice little 406 in a power glide. We were running through traps 160 and a quarter, you know, in this little hobby built car. The Mustang was no slouchier. That was like a buck 20, buck 25, depending on how we were.
00:33:04
Speaker
It reminds me makes me think of this show that used to be on I think it was called pinks or something like that Yeah, where they race for pink slips. Yeah. Yeah, it was Sort of it was low budget enough that it was intriguing Yeah, I mean like it really was like two guys showing up to race and oh, you know race for their cars Yeah, we had a lot of fun with it definitely had a lot of fun with it, but I
00:33:30
Speaker
I wound that down back in the 2000s. I actually built a Wild Trans Am for Eric, my boss. It's a totally one-off piece. I built a custom chassis for it. It was a 79. It's got a 410 Dart block in it right now.
00:33:52
Speaker
and we made the hood open this way. It's all complete. I'm an all new Shimo. Basically, I salvaged from the windows up and everything else is new. Is it a teatop because that doesn't look as much? It is a teatop. Yeah, it is a teatop. So yeah, it was quite the build. It took about seven years to build it with everything that was going on. We got it in the shop and we realized how bad it was.
00:34:15
Speaker
Yeah. And then we looked at, should we find another donor? The problem with those kinds of years are almost everything's junk. So you can go spend 20 grand for something to still get junk. So I said, well, let's just run with it. I can do it. You know, I went to high school. The guy had a 79 Transam.
00:34:31
Speaker
Is that like the Smokey and the Bandit kind of era? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I was always a huge Smokey and the Bandit fan. So I think I saw it 10 times in the theater, like in 77. That's a great movie. We still watch it. The wife and I like when it comes on TV. So it was really, you know, it was kind of a dream come true to actually.
00:34:48
Speaker
build that car of an icon of, you know, pop culture, which is... Yeah, there's been a couple of shows based around, you know, that car. Yeah, it was a lot of fun. They let me just run with it. And every car I did, I would do a crazy one-off sound system in them, because years ago I used to compete.
00:35:06
Speaker
and stereo competition and stuff in the early days. And, you know, so every car I did, I had to one up it, you know, or depending on what the budget was, you know, I would try to fit everything in where I could. Yeah, it's pretty crazy piece. So.
00:35:22
Speaker
didn't Keith do something like that with, um, uh, car audio. That's why he has like those subwoofers laying around. He's he, Keith like sold car audio, but, uh, I think, uh, Manny's buddy, Brian, didn't he do some of the competition? Somebody who did something because you were going to help him build a speaker box. That's right. Yeah. Or maybe it was, I'd been Manny's other buddy, Ray.
00:35:49
Speaker
Yeah, I was really into subwoofers and like the technology of the folded horn and all this other stuff. I mean, most of the things I would see in cars would be like direct radiators, just straight firing. But I was really into the technology, the physics of the folding and all that stuff.
00:36:11
Speaker
we actually, my crayon company before we did for clear global. So we were building the speakers, you know, for them on some couple of their product lines. And we do the console cases and stuff that, you know, a couple of cool things we did last year, we did, you know, once for it was a custom
00:36:32
Speaker
I forget what the name of the model was. Huge case, but Kenny Chesney tore, you know, all of them. And I mean, it's, it's their, their whole facility and it's called Rock Lidditz in Lidditz PA. It's, it's incredible. They just, a buddy of mine's a general manager down there.
00:36:50
Speaker
Just awesome. It was funny because we you know, we're big boaters and stuff and Todd used to see all the equipment he was the last one to see the stuff going out the door and The first one to see it when it came back So he had to go through tests make sure what went where you know what went in to rebuild that kind of stuff and we had it was probably a
00:37:10
Speaker
1988 and we had to tape, test tape from Madonna coming back. So we had this test, we're out in the boat skiing and stuff. And he goes, I got this tape here. Let's, let's pop that in. And she's freaking yelling at everybody. And I mean, just as crude as crude to be. That was pretty cool.
Rob's Humorous Story About Madonna
00:37:32
Speaker
Go from the rock star stuff to, uh,
00:37:35
Speaker
Rob once had a girlfriend who thought he was going to leave her for Madonna. Yes. It was right around that time frame. It was a late eighties and in New York, we were going to be the next big thing. We were a quarter by these major labels and everything.
00:37:54
Speaker
You know how sometimes people, your spouse or girlfriend just goes off the deep end. She just was fixated on this whole thing. And like, that is one of the craziest things I've ever heard.
00:38:08
Speaker
Madonna. Yeah, Madonna. The biggest star in the world. Yeah, especially at that time. All the girls at school were dressed up like Madonna and stuff like that. You had the Pat Benatar look or whatever. Too funny. I can only imagine. The crazy 80s. I remember it well.
00:38:35
Speaker
Oh man. So you've had your hand in a lot of different things through the years. Yeah. Yeah. I did, uh, I did a lot of home building as well in my spare time. So I do my, I do my cabins and stuff. We had up in mountains and, and, uh,
00:38:51
Speaker
So I had this, my last big project was, uh, we lived like, like in Pennsylvania, they call them like townships or boroughs pretty much the same type of thing. But it'd be like the same middle town. They call it middle town. That's where I live. And, but you'd still be middle town, but you'd be out in the town, the township part of it. And then she found this.
00:39:12
Speaker
house in the borough that was sitting vacant for like six years. It was this 1933 craftsman style home and they had it all just destroyed and so I had to bid on it through the government auction and it was like the last night
00:39:44
Speaker
go for that. And I get, I put the bid, I'm thinking, oh, I'm never going to get this thing. She calls me 10 o'clock next morning. Hey, you won. I'm like, so yeah, I built this. Everybody calls it the, Oh, you live on the house with the porch.
00:39:53
Speaker
of bidding before it went to like investors.
00:40:01
Speaker
And I built this crazy post and beam. It's eight by 12. I more than ten into everything. Walnut pegs, holding everything together. So the main structure is pine. And then I did these crazy banister rails out of lacewood. And then the tops and bottoms of the rails and the side runners are sapele.
00:40:30
Speaker
The deck is mahogany. Then it has a New England style flare that I did radiused coming off of the base of the top of the thing. If you can picture it going down off and then go straight down. So it has a cedar shake and then I did copper inlays on the caps. So it's got how many people, you know, between the cedar and the, no joy. Yeah. Yeah. It was everybody goes, would you build me one of those? I said not a million years.
00:40:57
Speaker
Everybody goes, how many hours you got that? I don't even know. How deep are your pockets? But you know, we like bird mouth everything on the miter and it's all saddle going up and down the rails. So I had like four fixtures just to do that going up the steps, both left and a right. So yeah, it was a lot of fun. I really enjoy projects like that.
00:41:23
Speaker
You know, I have big 1700s flat forging chisels, half radius darks. And until you work with some of the big stuff, you don't realize how crappy the, the little stuff is because you're, you're able to just fillet off, you know, now this chisels this long, you know, it's two and a half foot long, you know, with the handle and I have ones, I had different handles, depending on what I'm doing. And you can just,
00:41:51
Speaker
slide it in. It's really, really a nice way to do it. Like a big slick, I guess. Yeah, it is. Yeah. Yep. So that was a good project. So definitely had my hands on a lot of different things over the years and it doesn't happen in maybe our day for sure. No, not at all. Yeah.
00:42:15
Speaker
But yeah, that was always the thing. I just, I enjoyed doing it. I just, you know, from all aspects of it, I learned, love learning the prod, whatever you're
RC Planes and Family Hobby
00:42:24
Speaker
doing, learning the whole aspect of it and, you know, coming up with, I'm working on a big diesel pusher motorhome right now that I literally stripped through an aluminum. I was going to ask you what you had going on. Yeah. So that's, that's my latest. I got it almost finished. I actually just put the, uh,
00:42:41
Speaker
pictures up on I'm on his Facebook page RV renovations and it just like blew up because like nobody has seen somebody literally do a full sandwich construction you know I figured out that he's if I did a bunch of testing and basically stripped the aluminum two by they're one by one and a half but one and a half and then all new insulation where the
00:43:06
Speaker
plywood goes, I found where you could buy the Azdell, which a lot of the campers and motor homes now use Azdell other than Luan. So it's a full composite. So it's a 2.7 millimeter and it's waterproof. So I found the company in Lynchburg, Virginia, but they won't ship it. So all the companies around that use it, they have to send trucking in. So I went down and took the van down, loaded a whole pile of it up.
00:43:36
Speaker
It was like 15 bucks a sheet. Wow. It's cheap. And I was like, I had to ask the lady, I was like, are you sure? She goes, well, let me go double check. Yeah, that's only 15 bucks.
00:43:45
Speaker
And I'm like, I couldn't believe it because you can't even buy a piece of Luon for that. And this stuff has like an R value to it and it just lays nice. And then I redid all the aluminum skinning on the outside. So the whole thing, I got it almost all done. I got like two pieces of aluminum put on the other side and I already built all new cabinets and all new countertops for it. So they're all ready to just go back in. Well, so you're going cross country.
00:44:10
Speaker
Well, I do, I fly giant stale RC. So my dad still builds, he's 87 years old. And so he'll do the frameworks on him. I do all the motor work and all the electronics and I do all the painting. So, and I'm the flyer. He never, how big, what's the wingspan? Oh, our biggest glider right now is what's called a TG3. And that is 247 inch. Whoa. Yeah. Yeah. We're, we're flying. What's that 20? Yeah.
00:44:39
Speaker
Yeah, it's pretty crazy. Like my tow plane for the gliders, that's 222cc four cylinder boxer engine in it. Oh yeah, these are... So you fly the glider up, then let it go. And then it just has a little rudder. And I guess all the... And I kind of got sucked in a few years ago. Like I've always been to RC and flying the giant scale stuff and building and stuff.
00:45:06
Speaker
I just out of the blue, I was like, Hey, I want to go up this glider competition up in Goshen, New York. Just out of the blue. And a couple of my guys were like, you're not going to like this. You're too like high energy for, for those guys and stuff. I fell in love with, I got up there. Everybody was like inviting, totally opposite what everybody's telling me. And I was like, these guys are great. And I actually bought a glider that was used there and was at the very next event and the guys were awesome.
00:45:32
Speaker
so we go the wings come off yeah yeah um like that one is just two piece because i have a big enough van or trailer that i can i can carry it in like the tow plane that's still 138 inch wingspan you know then we have our sport planes and that that are you know 100 inch um
00:45:51
Speaker
everything we kind of do now is like one third scaling up. They just fly better, you know, and in reality, the economics of putting everything together, it's really not that much more money, you know, right in the scope of what you're doing. So yeah, but so we like go those events. So I had like a toy hauler and stuff.
00:46:10
Speaker
And we were using that, but the problem was I got four granddaughters now. And so I put bunks in this motor home. And so now basically going day trips and then, you know, to those kinds of events and stuff. And I can't afford a $200,000 motor home. So you built one. So I built one. Yeah. Yeah. We actually built our old race trailer years ago too. So we had a 40 foot goose neck that we built out of an old tractor trailer.
00:46:33
Speaker
cut the bottom rails off and had a buddy of mine that he built the new frame for underneath it. We put new triple axle torsions under it and we built like a living quarter in the front.
00:46:44
Speaker
I could back my dragster in and hoist the dragster up and then I pull my Mustang underneath it and we would go to the events and stuff with that. It's pretty cool. Everybody thought I had a $50,000 trailer for 10. Sweat equity. Yeah, so that's kind of how, I don't know if it's, I'm just stupid when it comes to...
00:47:04
Speaker
I like the abuse, you know, of the project. Oh, yeah. It's that satisfaction though. It's the whole built not bought kind of thing. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, all that stuff I enjoy, you know? Yeah. I just saw, I was scoping out fishing spots and there was a, was it Doorbrook Park maybe?
00:47:25
Speaker
where they had it was set on the map like RC plane area or something like that. Oh, yeah. Yeah, it's pretty popular. Actually, a lot of the places down in Florida, there's just whole communities that are based around RC flight line. Yeah, it's crazy. You know, like Ocala County, that's all over down there. That's where my grandparents lived was Ocala. Yeah, it's a nice area. Yeah.
00:47:52
Speaker
Weather's good. We have some friends that live down here because we're we go down there to the World Barefoot Center in Winter Haven. So we're barefoot water skiers. So what part of the state is Ocala? It's like an hour south of Gainesville, something like that. You're like over towards Orlando a little bit, but a little south.
00:48:14
Speaker
It's like it's like the chain of lakes is there like through Winter Haven and all that whole county is Ocala I believe is how it is and then Yeah, it's it's gorgeous area and the weather's nice yeah, so you're not like my brother lives down in He's important Ghana, which is like Naples for Myers area and it's brutal yeah
00:48:38
Speaker
Yeah. I remember looking for a, uh, looking at a job in St. Petersburg, uh, in a wood shop and I was like, what's it like in the summer? It's like, well, it's hot. Like, you know, like what does that mean? Yeah. It's brutal down there in the summer. It was one of the things that sort of made me, you know, yeah. Step lightly.
00:49:05
Speaker
So that guy with the dust tech, he just messaged me. He said, are you still interested in this 600 bucks and you got a deal? Sounds like a winner. That's a, it's quite a risk. Yeah. That's what happens. Yeah.
Equipment Evaluation at RT Machine
00:49:24
Speaker
So we had, uh,
00:49:26
Speaker
It's funny when I decided to close our shop down and Ron, I had Ron, the owner of RT come in and evaluate all the equipment and he said, well, what are you going to do? I said, I don't know. I guess whoever wants me, I guess.
00:49:40
Speaker
So he said, why don't you come on board with us? So that's how it all. Is that how you started with RT? Yeah, but yeah, we've been friends forever, you know, and it's funny because his dad, Dan Boos was my equipment salesman from the eighties. So, you know, I've known my family all the way up through and Ron worked for a company, well, IRS auctions that you bought off. We used to be carpenters machine.
00:50:07
Speaker
And until they got rid of the carpenter's machine, just kept the auction company. And that's who Ron had actually worked for. So it was pretty good marriage. He's been in it forever and really has done well. Well, how can people find our team machine? RTmachine.com is one of the easiest and
00:50:32
Speaker
Yeah, the guys are on Instagram. So Instagram is the big. Yeah. He'll do a lot of posting on Instagram as well as stuff that's just finished. Like they'll do on the service side of things and the reconditioning. Yeah. So they just put up like a, what was it? A drawer clamp or something. Yeah.
00:50:54
Speaker
And it was that the Oliver band solo was just finished up, you know, little flashes. Yeah. You know, I remember when we were looking for a slider and it was like, uh, I remembered after we met you that I was on the website looking and, but it's like to find a used slider these days, there's, there's none. No, it's, it's difficult. And a lot of them are.
00:51:18
Speaker
pretty beat. Yeah. So that's why you don't see typically, um, like right now we don't have anything I believe on there used unless it's a consignment or something. But yeah, we're pretty pick picky when it comes to the, to the sliders and whatnot. Our buddy Tim, uh, bought a, an SCM sliding shaper from you guys. Yeah. Maybe, I don't know. It must've been a couple of years ago, but he said it was great. Yeah. I mean the used market is, is really a great way to go depending on what you're looking for and what your resources are.
00:51:47
Speaker
you know, depending on what your capability of working on stuff is as well. Yeah. We get a lot of, a lot of big shops that, you know, it's pretty late model machines that they already have that same machine and they'll bring them in because they know the machine, you know, or have a stockpile of parts they've created, you know, some of these larger companies that we get into. That's what we find with that a lot of times.
00:52:11
Speaker
Yeah, we we learned a little bit about the slider when we got it because it was missing a few things, but it was all, you know, trial error. What the hell is this thing do? Why isn't this work? And hey, look, there's only one belt. There's two bullies. Yeah. Yeah. There's no user manual. There's no user manual in existence. Even if you call Minimax, they're like, yeah, we don't have one for a ninety nine. Well, that's you know, when you're buying from auction,
00:52:41
Speaker
You don't really know what you're getting a lot of times. What we're doing, we're bringing stuff in and we'll depend on how it is. Some stuff we'll sell as is, depending on what it is and others that are cleaned and checked and then we sell full recondition. So, we give the options. I think we just finished up.
00:53:03
Speaker
Maureen Johnson, gang rep, that's actually just coming out of the shop right now. We're a new one with two moving blades and stuff. You're talking about a $200,000 machine.
00:53:13
Speaker
they, uh, company opted to take theirs and recondition it. And I think brand new machine basically at like 90 grand. So, but they had the base to work off, you know, so it just depends on what it is. We have a huge Harmon laminator in there right now, which is basically a melamine laminating press system. You know, it's a couple of million dollar deal. We're going to full recondition on right now.
00:53:37
Speaker
So what, you put the core material in and it comes out the other side with... Yeah, this thing's monsters. It literally takes up, I think, end to end, all together, somewhere around 150 feet. Oh my God. Yeah, I think pretty close with all the other... Just two shops like that. Well, it's broke down, you know, into different parts of it. So we just bought another one that we have in stock as well. Jeez. And this one we had purchased in the company that had another one. Problem is Harlan Laminator,
00:54:07
Speaker
was sold and Patrick Industries bought them, so they won't sell to any competition. They bought it for themselves. So when we get the stuff, now we have control that we can sell it to people that are in that.
00:54:23
Speaker
Yeah, it's quite interesting. I mean, I think we should probably do like an updated. We just moved the shops around quite a bit right now. So because of some of these, the magnitude of the size of some of these projects, you know, we moved that into a bigger area. So we have it knocked down to where something comes in. It's tested.
00:54:40
Speaker
We decide, you know, pictures and stuff are taken and then we decide, you know, get an evaluation. Okay. Is it, here's what the price would be as is. Here's what the price would be reconditioned or it needs these items. Yeah. You got to go through it and figure out the cost of, yeah. And then we have a complete machine shop in house. So everything that we're in, we're ramping that up right now, even larger that just because of the capacities, you know, we, we have stuff out the other shops and they just can't,
00:55:07
Speaker
Keep up at the lead times and then you know, so we're able to control the quality and you can make all the parts that aren't available. Yeah So we have some pretty talented crew. Yeah, that's the machining side too. Yeah. Yeah, my son's background is he's Got a bachelor of manufacturing engineering. Plus he grew up under my toilet. So he's
00:55:31
Speaker
He's had his hands on everything. But overall, it's a couple of buddies that actually worked for him, now engineers that came on board with him because of all the different magnitude of projects. We take rebuild controls for units. So stuff that's outdated or a complete line will make a full set of controls. It controls every piece of the line.
00:55:55
Speaker
So that's something is very unique that most people can't say, you know, and customize the lines. So it's, we definitely bring a very unique package to the table for sure. You know, and from all the way down to the smallest, you know, it's the smallest stuff that you guys do.
00:56:15
Speaker
uh, typically like our, you know, the, the smaller Oliver, um, North tech, you know, um, on those types of machines, we have a couple other lines there. We can do like the Laguna as well. You know, just depending on what, uh, I actually just quoted a Laguna dovetailer
Understanding Adhesives in Woodworking
00:56:32
Speaker
the other day. And of course you can go all the way up to full CNC dovetailers with Marie Johnson that you're talking $75, $80,000. So, you know, just depends on what the,
00:56:42
Speaker
Workload is yeah. It's got to do with it. Yeah, so it's pretty much everything in between You know, and then we we buy used equipment as well The biggest problem is a lot of times some of the used equipment that somebody has in their bone yard Some of it's worthwhile. We never you never know until you look at I think I think I know somebody with an edge bander I think we evaluate It's working Well, you know what though something like that if somebody is willing to
00:57:11
Speaker
to put their sweat equity into it. And, but you know, as well as I do, your resources are slim. It's the two of you and you got to decide, do I want to spend six hours on this? And no, we want the edge band or the edge band. Yeah. Yeah. And that's the, you want to be able to, like I said before, I said, I don't think there's too many salesmen out there combined can tune it for you. I mean, even, you know, I think there's only one. Yeah.
00:57:41
Speaker
I mean, he's, he has experience on this exact edge bander. You know, I mean, it's been probably whatever 20 years since he's run it, but, and like Corey and a couple of guys who had actually run this edge bander, like we couldn't get it running. Yeah. You know, I get it running at all. Yeah. That's what I said. We're going to put your card inside the cabin. So when somebody buys it in it,
00:58:05
Speaker
5% discount on the glue. Oh, by the way, I got you. We're setting that up with the 280.90. And so free bag of glue is coming with that. Oh, cool. I said, Kurt, I want it set up like this and this is what I want. I've known Kurt for a long time at Sahesa. Yeah, actually, the Sahesa was I was going back and forth with him a little bit on Instagram.
00:58:28
Speaker
I guess it's some guy out in Spain, you know. Oh, no kidding. Yeah. Yeah. I just actually talked to one of the techs back when Kurt and I were going over your machine, actually. And we were going back and forth a little bit on the corner rounding and how I wanted it to really be set up for you guys. And so it was good. Great guy over there. He's very knowledgeable. Cool. He's been at the plant forever.
00:58:51
Speaker
See, that's the stuff that you don't get when you just punch in your order on the computer. Exactly. That's like the guy from Elite Metal Tools, which is they sell some machines and stuff online. And we were looking at CanTech. It's one of those things where it's like, get a request a quote. It's a request a quote. And then inevitably they call you when you don't respond, because we're just window shopping anyway. This is going back a couple of months.
00:59:18
Speaker
And I'm like, oh, I'm like, we actually ended up going to the Sohisa. He's like, oh, he's like, I actually sell those machines. I'm like, yeah, but it wouldn't have been the same. You know, it's not. No. And that's the value added service that we're. Well, we talked about it because, you know, this is a huge purchase for us. It's monstrous.
00:59:37
Speaker
We weighed the value. Basically, you know, what's Brian's value here and all of this in this endeavor, because it's not just buying a machine. Yeah, it's after it's that it's like a sport bike or something, you know, yeah.
00:59:55
Speaker
We were looking at that BAC and then it was like, you know, I could buy this guy's got this Ferrari for a really good deal, but there's no shops in this entire town that work on Ferraris. Like, what good is buying it? Well, it's funny because I just had that now we, you know, because we sell used as well. So, you know, I got to be careful sometimes. But now they're they're good machines. They were never known for their edge banners.
01:00:24
Speaker
you know, around their CNCing processes and stuff, that was always a strong point, you know, as far as, because I looked at them and I ran, you know, and one thing that, you know, I'm kind of bringing to the plate as well as, you know, with all the years I've been in business, I used to drive around, I'd take my product,
01:00:41
Speaker
and drive cross country and running on whatever machine I was going to be using. I didn't want to just do little 12 inch sample pieces and stuff. I want to like, we're running, you know, all this elevator panels. I was taking basically four by eights of a three eights banded. It's got a cup to it, you know, and we're going to run that through the machine. Well, it threw a lot of guys for a loop. They're like, well, we can just run these. I'm like, no, no, no, I'm backing my truck up and we're going to run what I brought.
01:01:06
Speaker
You know, and that's what I did all the year. So I have a lot of background and even the highest end machines, you know, when you get into the contour banding and stuff on full, you know, basically point to point. So I ran those machines as well, looking at, you know, bringing them into my planet different times. So yeah, I was definitely a stickler for knowing the nuts and bolts and
01:01:28
Speaker
how it's going to work and progress over time. Because it's a machine when it comes down to it. Every machine is going to have something, but it's the reaction
01:01:39
Speaker
to getting over that because you can't afford to be down. That's the biggest hurdle. It's like that in our business too. Things can go wrong, so to speak. It's always about how you respond. Exactly. With the client. Exactly. How you fix things. We try to get those wall units in on Monday.
01:02:00
Speaker
Yeah, and they were so we there it's a bumped out fire got all about it or two niches on either side. So we have these wall units that go, you know, they go in. We built the face frames loose and the cabinet boxes are an inch smaller than the opening. Yeah, you know, we don't want the styles to be too big. So whatever just made it a half inch on either side.
01:02:20
Speaker
Well, they cased the trimmed opening right next to it. And on the other side, there's a door going outside. So all of a sudden, the geometry, we couldn't get it in there. This is had some really big the backband. Yeah. It was like an inch and three quarter. Oh, wow. Something. Yeah. So, yeah, huge. Yeah. We were in trouble. So, yeah, you know, the power planer knock the corners off and get it in there. Got it in. Yeah. Yeah. It's the name of the game being able to react to it. Stand back a little bit.
01:02:47
Speaker
Mm-hmm. They even told us just take them take the molding down, you know We'll we'll put it back up and Jeff got up there and he was like, yeah, you know, it's it looks so nice I don't really want to like take this guy's work. Yeah, it was glue Yeah, that's usually one thing where you're just like it's stuck just a little bit and the whole thing like, you know rips in half, you know, it's like
01:03:08
Speaker
Yeah, because it was flat stock with a butt joint and then a mitered backband around it. And it's nailed this way, you know, through the backband. It was never, it wasn't intended to come apart. When you see nice trim work, which, you know,
01:03:25
Speaker
I mean, this is the Hampton, so you hope that it's going to be nice, but most trim work you see is real shoddy. But this was like nice and tight. I'm like, I really don't want to destroy this guy's. Yeah, because, you know, trying to put something back together like that sometimes is, you know, very difficult if you can get it cleaned up. And I know a lot of guys use a lot of adhesive anymore, you know, and very little fasteners to get some of this stuff done. Yeah, it's insane that we, a job we did recently, the one in Seabright, I'm pulling off the baseboard to put in the cabinets.
01:03:56
Speaker
a ton of little short nails, but nothing hit a stud anywhere. It's like the guy just shot in a nail and he's like, all right, 16 inches from here, but never clipped a stud at all. So I started out in residential carpentry as a finished carpenter and my boss, I mean, this is only
01:04:17
Speaker
At the latest 10 years ago. We would still go back and hand nail everything so we would shoot everything in with a gun Yeah, PL glue on the backs of all the trim You know yellow glue on on all the miters and we would go back and hand nail with ten penny finished nails Faceboard crown mold. He was old school. Yeah He was old school. Mm-hmm. Yeah, because really on a lot of the nail guns today. They're not designed as a
01:04:44
Speaker
A full holding the trim through. Yeah, it doesn't push it doesn't you know? Clamp the way a hand nail does when you set a real finish nail Most guys are like what are these? Yeah, well, this is how it was done and it worked really really well for a long time the typewriter. Yeah Well, it's scary going back to hand nail crown molding when you got it up there It looks you know, yeah, it looks good. You have to be real careful because
01:05:12
Speaker
And it'll hurt you because it'll suck it tight.
01:05:15
Speaker
you know, where you can fudge it and it's a little off, you know, and, and the miter looks good. And then when you put that hand down in while it sucked it tight to the wall and then all of a sudden you're open over here. Yeah. So it, you know, it puts you in the check. Yeah. No doubt about it. I mean, with the new products out there, as far as adhesives, it's made life a lot, a lot more forgiving and a lot of stuff works really well. I mean, it's, yeah, we used our share of it on those beams. Yeah.
01:05:45
Speaker
Yeah, a lot of adhesive. Yeah, there's no substitute for PL glue. Yeah, over the years I did a lot of glue testing with Wilsonark. So being that we did so much flat laminating and stuff that we were always on the test bed.
01:06:06
Speaker
a contact adhesive or an EVA or a PVA that we were working with. And if they had a new product, they would send it up in the label X can to me. Well, we had some pretty good regional guys that put a lot of weight in us. They trusted our opinion and we would run it through a series of tests. And that's how we kind of got to being that test guy through everything.
01:06:33
Speaker
Then years ago, National Casein went out of business, but I had worked with a chemist over there. He used to come into the shop and I'd show him what I'm trying to do with the glue spreaders and stuff and what kind of viscosity and things we needed and like the initial tactability and he would tweak stuff. And it was a great relationship and I was sad to see when they actually
01:06:56
Speaker
closed up. I don't know if they were bought out by another company and just dissolved the national case scene. A lot of times that's what happens. But yeah, we, we had, we had a lot of good with them and with the Wilsar as well. So you had machines that would apply and spread the glue. Yes. And then. Powered roll coders. And then we did.
01:07:15
Speaker
a lot of different stuff with spray contacts. So not only through the flammables, all the water-based adhesives, and then some of the specialty contracts, like to give you an idea, the 3310, which is a great assembly glue that we ran through the test and came up with the spray equipment to spray it. So when you're doing like multiple sheets of like MDF and you're bending something in a radius, because that glue had enough elasticity to it,
01:07:45
Speaker
But it had the bond strength that really bit in because it had a little bit longer open time. So it really set in. So we would put stuff in these fixtures that we built. We'd spray each side, pop them all together. You know, it'd be like four sheets at a time in a thing. And then these clamps and just unbelievable. So the spray equipment, when you look at 3310, that's craling industries that
01:08:08
Speaker
came up with that, spraying equipment. So yeah, I mean, I just always enjoyed like the hurdles, you know, to figure out what the, and usually what I gave them was the window of operation. So you can have a two inch window of operation or you can have a five foot window of operation. And depending on what you're doing, you know, and there's a lot of great adhesives. The biggest problem is, is that salesman that's selling it,
01:08:35
Speaker
to the correct shop. You need to go into that shop. You need to find out what their temperatures are in that building, if they're gonna adhere to those temperatures. And are they gonna pay attention to that tight window? So that's usually what dictates a lot of times on adhesives that should be used. And depending on the application you're trying to go up against. So that's one of the key factors with adhesives, which I'm more than happy to help anybody with getting over that hurdle.
01:09:04
Speaker
different flatbed laminating. We laminate a lot of panels. Yeah, I don't know what exactly Tom used, just like a, you know, your typical propane tank looking contact adhesive.
01:09:16
Speaker
Yep. And there's so many of those out there right now and everybody kind of has that product, you know, between for Mike and Wilson art and it makes it as an easy, but what you have to remember is a propellant on that. And then you have to look at what the carcinogens are. Yeah. So some of those you really want to look into only MSD sheet.
01:09:38
Speaker
I have a buddy out in Arizona, Grant. He uses that Wilson, our H2O, I think it's called. Great glue. Yeah, he likes that a lot. He buys a Harbor Freight cup gun and just sprays it on. Yeah, we actually were in the beginning stages back in...
01:09:53
Speaker
early nineties developing that glue. So when they were coming into that, we actually had one of the first, I had a custom build out in Minneapolis, Minnesota, it was a Midwest drying tunnel. And so I had a conveyor operation eight foot wide and we used to run all these full big countertops, you know, down through this. And so we would take that glue.
01:10:14
Speaker
and then tweaked everything with them until we've really found a nice product with it. That's actually been one of the really good glues. But like anything, it's proper use. The biggest thing that we find is people will spray it too heavy and then they'll try to flash dry it and then they trap the moisture. So it's dry on top, but you'll see a milkiness underneath it.
01:10:40
Speaker
Once you trap that, it takes forever for that to go away. If you're lucky, it'll bite into the core and be okay. A lot of times what will happen is you'll get a bubble or a delam because you've had so much moisture trapped in there. And so what we would do,
01:10:55
Speaker
we were running through, we're spraying and then we're running through the drying tunnels and then it would get laid, then it's going through a pinch rolling process. So it had consistent pressure through the big large pinch rollers and stuff. So like in our high production lines, that's kind of how we handled that with the contact. Yeah, Pete's doing it with a J-roller. Yeah. Well, there's some of that you can never get away from, but you know what I mean? It's like,
01:11:19
Speaker
whatever guys how lazy he's feeling that day to just make it look like he's going through this and there's no no real pressure going on. Tom had those little palm ones it's just like a block of wood with a yeah I'm like you can't get any pressure with this thing. Yeah there's actually quite a bit of technique to the rolling.
01:11:36
Speaker
I bet. And then actually, when you get into some of the wider rollers, you actually lose pressure, though you think you're getting more, but now you've just distributed your wrist weight, you know? Right. It's like walking in grass with sneakers or high heels. What's going to go through the grass? Exactly.
Elevator Panel Projects and Challenges
01:11:54
Speaker
So, yeah. No, I had a lot of fun over the years. I mean, helping develop a lot of stuff.
01:11:58
Speaker
you know, just different processes and travel around the country and yeah, learning it. I mean, elevator panels are everywhere. I guess I was delivering that went all over the world. Yeah. You know, probably most of our products was North America, but we had a lot of stuff that that went out as well.
01:12:17
Speaker
Yeah. People, you know, even though that aren't in the trade, you know, they could notice these things because they're everywhere. You know, you walk in every elevator, it's made up of these, you know, wood or veneered panels. And one of the last projects we did is we were using a special Rusco glue.
01:12:40
Speaker
that's designed just for this process. It's only made for that process for an Schindler and it's a flammable contact that we're gluing right to the galvanized and to the laminate right to the actual structure of the elevator. So they ship all the panels into us and we glue everything up. It's a special wipe down process we do.
01:13:02
Speaker
four on the metal and then goes through spraying and heated dry tunnel and then through assembly. So it's. So it's, it's integral to the elevator instead of. Correct. So where you have, where you have the hung panel scenario where you already had the whole steel structure and it's used like a bow tie nylon nut that just slides onto the panel or onto the metal panel itself. That is part of the elevator. Interesting.
01:13:29
Speaker
Well, they're trying to come up with cost-effective ways. I was going to say, is that a way to save money? An economy on it. And, you know, and I think down the road, if they redo the panels or whatnot, they just hang a panel over it. Right. Yeah, I was going to say, when that gets messed up, then you just go to it. It's like you get two for one. So I'm not quite sure. Put the new roof over the old roof. Yeah. So we used to do a lot of just, you know, locally, we would do
01:13:59
Speaker
retrofits. You know, yeah, we were talking. I think we might have been talking about it on Monday. We did a job in Hoboken and the super was like, do not mess up my elevator. You know, they were there like get manic about it.
01:14:14
Speaker
Oh yeah. Well, it's how to walk up eight flights. It's very costly. If something happens to that, especially when you got those union elevator guys in there. Oh yeah. Yeah. They're like the mafia from over here. Yeah.
01:14:29
Speaker
I worked in the city for a couple of years and in New York and getting to the apartments was always the, the, you had to negotiate. And I mean, it was like a whole crew of people that you had to pay as they say, Greece. Yeah. We were, we, we did exhibit work. This is, I was quite younger then, but
01:14:55
Speaker
So we would ship to these shows all over the place. And a lot of times we were shipping to the Chicago shows. So for my dad would always have the truck loaded up, grease money, you know, for every, just to get through the gate, to get unloaded, to get the guys on the forklift, to get you unloaded till you could actually, once it was in your booth, you could put it together. But everything in between that, you're talking about a thousand dollars. Oh yeah. Because when you're working in an apartment in New York,
01:15:24
Speaker
You're there all day, you know, for weeks. Yeah. So you, you have to have access. You have to have, you know, you're bringing things up and down and you know, that special relationship. We were working on the 23rd floor in this condo units and right, right on the water. I mean, literally when you're looking up, you couldn't see the concrete under you because it was just all like water.
01:15:51
Speaker
while we were doing these solid surface countertops up there and the back splashes were full, full length. We didn't, we didn't piece them. I couldn't get them in the elevator. So I sent the tools up in the elevator with the elevator guy and he gets up to the top. I'm loading, my guy, my helper was up there and he said, your boss ain't going to be very happy. He's got to come up 23 flights a step with those splashes. So, you know, I'm like going up through around the stairwell. I mean, oh my God, that was, that was brutal.
01:16:21
Speaker
Yeah, we had an 11 foot like hanging media console and it went from corner to you know, and I'm trying to draw the elevator in fusion and place the cabinets. I'm like, I think it's going to fit and we're going to have to walk it up. Otherwise, thankfully it did. Yeah, we've already made stuff in pieces just.
01:16:43
Speaker
spent more time assembling the darn thing. Yeah. You know, if it was that big, of course you don't ever want to have to do that, but no, some of those instances, there's, we finished this one and then I was like, shit, this is going to Hoboken and we had never been to the job site. You know, it just came from a designer and, and it wasn't the,
01:17:03
Speaker
drawings were like completely wrong. She's got like 10 foot ceiling. Ceilings are like seven foot six. We trim everything. There was like outlets where there wasn't supposed to be any outlets. It was always. Yeah. Oh, there's her there. Yeah. Sorry about that. Yeah. The designers don't use tape measures. We were talking about before, like, you know, value engineering stuff.
01:17:28
Speaker
this big job we sent out, you know, like some bunch of commercial stuff. It's like 50 something, whatever. They're like, all right, the client's budget's 30. And I'm like looking at the, you know, going through and making what changes I can. I'm like, I can't bring this down. Twenty thousand dollars. I'm like, there's no there's a there's not that much meat on the bone and B. It's like I already gave you you asked for the bare minimum, like the cheapest way. I already gave you the cheapest way.
01:17:56
Speaker
Remember when you always got to keep 15% in your pocket. Yeah to negotiate. Yeah, but Everybody wants like I took all the backs off the cabinets Unless you know you want to pay somebody else to install it we could knock some more money off but Yeah, and that itself can be
01:18:17
Speaker
Huge. Oh yeah. You know, just trucking like you talked about going over the Hamptons, the tolls and you know, everything that goes along with it. Sometimes people think they're saving money and then they wind up spending more. Yeah, absolutely. Yep.
01:18:31
Speaker
Um, it's just, just the way it is. Cause you wind up, you know, the economy of scale, we, we pass along the, a little bit of savings, right? You know, for, for our labor and stuff like that. Cause we're already involved in the project. Somebody that's coming in from the outside, they're going to charge a premium. Yeah. They're looking at full start-up here at the job. So it's a whole different animal.
01:18:53
Speaker
Half the battle is just becoming acquainted with the client. You know what I mean? Learning what they like, what they don't like, all the idiosyncrasies that they have. So if we already know the client, well, then it's that much easier for us. Yeah. Oh, yeah.
01:19:08
Speaker
Yeah. Earlier today, when I went down to our other customer there with the door sander. So like right now I'm picking up samples, run them at the shop, tweaking it, you know, messing with the heads in the paper and seeing what we can dial in for. I just brought another load home for Friday. I'll run for them. But that's the little stuff that, you know, we're willing to go that extra mile and make sure that everything's going to be right before, you know, we got over the hurdle. I got in the door first and yeah. Yeah.
01:19:38
Speaker
And, you know, people keep coming back when you offer that level of service, you know, it's not just like it's not like we said, all right, we'll take we're going to do the edge banner and then we never heard from you again, you know, which I mean, that's what happens. It happens a lot. Yeah. You know, but no, I got one right now. We're working on the molder. I'm going to, you know, pull samples for because they're concerned about chatter and stuff. You know, half the battle is what's out in the marketplace and what somebody is trying to oversell.
01:20:06
Speaker
You know, that's, that's the worst thing that I think, you know, oversell something and it can't perform when it hits the floor. You know, that, that's really letting the customer. Yeah. That's like our, that would be my biggest fear with a job would be to deliver it and the client thinking, Oh man, this is not like what I thought it was going to be. You know, I was expecting punching the gut. Yeah. Yeah. That's not a very comforting point. Yeah.
01:20:34
Speaker
thank goodness we we usually get the oh my god look at that you exceeded our expectations that's what you want to hear yeah the uh
01:20:44
Speaker
Yeah, so as we move forward with stuff, I'm hoping I can help a lot of guys out. Yeah, that would be cool if you've got a couple of referrals, people listening to the podcast. What's the, we know your region is sort of like New Jersey, Long Island, everything, right?
National Service Projects and Expansion Plans
01:21:02
Speaker
How far does RT Machine service? We actually go cross country. So we've had different things where, you know, wherever it's like, we have guys in Alabama this week. Oh.
01:21:13
Speaker
You know, so, you know, we're down into Florida and we cleaned a plan out in Wisconsin. Our guys were out there for eight weeks. Wow. And, uh, you know, it was an auction deal and we did all the rigging out of the auction, but we had to clean the whole plan out. So we were responsible to take all the wiring and everything out of this plan as a flooring plan. So yeah, it just depends on what it is. You know, we, uh, did just about anything that's cool into our realm and makes sense. You know,
01:21:42
Speaker
How big is the, um, facility? We're 80,000 square feet and we're actually looking to expand quite a bit. So yeah, with the, we're on 25 acres up there. So it's, uh, how far from here? It's near O'Shea, you said, right? Uh, no, no. O'Shea is down by York. We're actually Hughesville towards Williamsport. Oh, Williamsport. Yeah. So we're like 25 minutes south of we're Hughesville Muncie area. That's close to Grizzly.
01:22:12
Speaker
right down the road from where Grizzly was. Yeah. Yeah. They closed that. Oh, they closed it. Yeah. Yeah. That was a huge, beautiful facility up there. Yeah. It just didn't make sense for their distribution. You know, we'll like home in college. Yep. Yeah. I've been to like home. Yep. But you weren't ready for somebody to bring that up.
Travel Routes and Pennsylvania Landmarks
01:22:34
Speaker
Yeah. I don't know how, which way you guys would come across there. Like I come out 78. So is it Northeast Pennsylvania?
01:22:44
Speaker
Uh, we're like north central. Yeah. You know, we're starting to get over here. What's another landmark city or a town? Bloomsburg. That's, it's not big. I'm trying to think what else would be. It's not like Lancaster area. No, no, no, no. No, we're, we're going to be, I'm trying to think what else I'd be at. So if you're coming across 80, you'd come through like Wilkes Barris Grant. I think it's about an hour from us.
01:23:12
Speaker
but I'm just trying to think which is the best way from here breaking up and over. Like I run 78 out cause it's fast, you know, then that would, would shoot up through. But so I would say it's probably three, three and a half maybe from here.
01:23:29
Speaker
Oh, well. Well, like I'm I'm in Jersey every week. So, yeah. From my house, it's, you know, not two hours. You know, running around. Marking my territory. We got it. We got it. We're peeing on every door. Yeah. We're lucky with our commutes. I think I'm up to four miles now. If I make all the lights, it's like 10 minutes in the morning. Yeah.
01:23:55
Speaker
Yeah, that's not bad at all. Yeah, it all depends. You know, it's funny because it's like it's such a short commute. I turn left onto 36 and that first light I'll be red and then it's green all the way up to Main Street. And then you catch the first two green and the second one red. Yeah. And that's the way it is every morning.
01:24:22
Speaker
See, when I go on to main, I go down Lenerville, I make a right onto Main Street, Belford, and then I make a left on a 36. If I don't get on it real good, as soon as I get on a 36, I hit all the red lights. So I got to really get on it and get through, get through the light at Main Street, Port Monmouth.
01:24:42
Speaker
Yeah, I go, you know, speed limits 50. I probably go about 50, 53 or whatever it hits. Get all the green lights. I'm doing about 75. Creatures, I have it. Yeah. Yeah. This morning I was trying to fill in some other stuff, but I just couldn't find anything that was without backtracking for my first job. So I just waited a little bit later and came out today and hit down around, uh,
01:25:12
Speaker
Asbury as well. A lot of shops are closed up. Yeah. You know, that's half the battle or he wasn't serviced, you know, out this way, you know, so I'm pretty much in uncharted territories for a lot of it. Yeah. Well, Tom's brother had a shop in, I think it was an Asbury, right? Yeah. I think he shut down. Andrew Grossman. Did you go to him?
01:25:32
Speaker
I don't know over there yet. The upholstery guy? Yeah. Yeah. I was there at CNC and everything. They do a lot of bankheads. Yeah. I was there this afternoon, actually. The the one guy I need to talk to was out. But it looks like I had a fair amount going on with the upholstery work and everything. Yeah. My old helper, Leilani is woman. She was the best, best helper I ever had. She works there. She's great. Yeah, I was.
01:26:00
Speaker
really odd that there were so many shops that I was hitting dead ends with, you know, from different lists that I have, you know, trying to just clean that up. Yeah. I'm trying to think of who else is out this way. You got Wind River who moved over to Fairhaven. They, they, uh, I reached out to them. They just bought a Laguna bandit. I don't know which size. I know they have a couple of different sizes. Yeah. Um, those are, uh, coming out of the Nanzing plant.
01:26:26
Speaker
Hmm sounds high-end Is actually pretty big yeah, yeah, it used to be badged under gibbon hmm is what it was But I'm pretty familiar with those machines as well. It's been a bunch of time. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah edge bander seems to be like my
01:26:44
Speaker
Yeah. I don't know how that over happened. Hot Rods and Edge Banders. That's going to be the title of this episode. There you go. Yeah. I mean, we have, you know, we had a couple of flat beds, you know, verticals, point to points. So we had pretty much everything that was around the realm and knowing what what can fit a marketplace and what type of work people are doing. I'm always a big fan of the point to points as well.
01:27:13
Speaker
just because you can do a lot of stuff you know a shop that
01:27:17
Speaker
doesn't have like per se a very square panel saw. You can rough cut everything or have a vertical. That's one of the other nice things with it. So if you have a vertical saw, you know, if you're really tight on space and going to a point to point, you just do a trim cut all the way around it. So one of the key features with that is you're not burrowing all the way through when you're running nested base. So the biggest challenge with nested base is the tooling.
01:27:46
Speaker
And a lot of this stuff you have to run compression bits on and the peak between the two compressions is what gets beat up first. So typically that's where you'll start to see like a line on the panel and then you have to address that. So it starts to happen and we see a lot is, guys are running dull tooling.
01:28:07
Speaker
and then they try to make up for it at the edge banner with the pre-mill. So the biggest problem you have there is, okay, if you have a hiccup on the, on the banding and you've already pre-milled off, you know, if you're, you're doing one millimeter, what have you, that panel is not junk because your drillings and everything are already on there. And so that's, that's one of the biggest problems that you see. And so if you have a couple hiccups in a day, now to reintroduce it on the flatbed,
01:28:36
Speaker
Now it becomes an issue because now you're trying to just put one piece on there or you're going to put it just a full sheet up and knock out a couple of pieces, you know, and then put this half sheet up, you know, and it doesn't get reintroduced at one point. You know, it just depends. I mean, there's a lot of high speed stuff running that's, you know, auto load, auto offload, and it works, works great. It just depends on, I'm just always a fan of a panel.
01:28:58
Speaker
That's my first priority, although we have flat beds, which you need the flat beds as well. But when you really get into building a lot of boxes or controlling, you're cutting square parts on a saw, where a lot of parts that aren't getting machining after the fact, or they're getting horizontal machining or something.
01:29:19
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, that's the way we look at it, to the table saw and the band. Yeah, for cabinet boxes, it would take more time to program it. I mean, even with, you know, something like Mosaic or whatever, where it's kind of just whatever, then it would to just walk to the saw and just start cutting it up, you know? Well, and that's where you have to look at, you know, the economies of your time.
01:29:43
Speaker
the scope of things, that's what people usually start to lose. Okay, how much time did I just now spend?
01:29:51
Speaker
working on something else that I could have been productive on. And that all goes depending on what the job is. There's no like one single answer, I believe that it says, oh yeah, everything's gotta go this way. Everything's gotta go that way. Especially with the cut hardware or software, I guess it is, where it tells you how to maximize the sheet stock and everything like that. I mean, that really helps the SAW operator. Yeah, the optimization is,
01:30:20
Speaker
Yeah, that's what I was looking for. Yeah, definitely. When any type of selling operation, if you can introduce a optimization, you know how it goes. You get, you get, you guys are good. Thousand things going through your head. And now you're over here trying to cut the job. What did I just cut? You know,
01:30:37
Speaker
Yeah, we use a free online thing called Opticutter. You just punch in, you know, dimensions, you can select your grain direction. Yeah. And it says, OK, cut six sheets just like this. Cut four sheets just like that. Cut one sheet just like this. Yeah. It takes all the human error out of it. Exactly.
01:30:53
Speaker
Yeah. And with like you said, that's a free program. I know. So I mean, it's unbelievable, right? Yeah. Even a big job like we've been a kitchen. This lady paid for a kitchen and the guy stiffed her. No, it was like nine months later. She had paid the guy like 30 grand. I don't know. You know, it was whatever deposit or something. He said, I don't have your money and I don't have the kitchen. So she reached out to us to price it out.
01:31:21
Speaker
even like extrapolating the parts on that and plugging it in just to get a material list, like a quantity, I mean, it didn't take very long at all. And that was going through plans and, you know, having to make a list off of somebody else's drawings. Well, like you said, the Mosaic program, that's a pretty good program for very budget minded, you know, and to be honest today, you know, unless you're doing something, you got to go into cabinet vision.
01:31:48
Speaker
you know, which, you know, a lot of shops run and there's nothing wrong with the program. Um, you can link multiple things together, but you know, I know a very big shop up in Pennsylvania, Northway industries, and they still, they have the best of the best equipment and still have problems getting, uh, posting the new equipment. So nothing's just a plug and play per se. There is some things that, that kind of goes smooth, but there's a learning curve to every, every step of it.
01:32:16
Speaker
Hopefully I'll still need people. Yeah. Yeah. It's just something about this industry. It's like they won't let us have anything easy. You know, it's like always got to be a little, we have all this automation, but it's not going to work perfect. There's still going to be, yeah, the headaches are, they can be, well, actually I'm going through that with, with a customer on a motor radio. They're debating on, he does do a lot of smaller run stuff, but typically what they run is a 1500, about 3000.
01:32:46
Speaker
feet on their runs. But do I spend the extra $6,000 and do full servo controls? But the problem with that is the back end has to be, your front end of that, you have to have everything dialed in of your cutter. So everything has to be measured correctly on your cutter. So if something was sent out
01:33:12
Speaker
Sharpen comes back on. If you didn't put that in exactly, you're still going to be fuddling around, you know, where like he says he has all the samples and he writes down.
01:33:23
Speaker
all his spec right on the back of that sample test piece. So then he goes in and says, oh, click, click, click. There's only really a couple of things he's got to move for it.
Molder Machine Technology
01:33:32
Speaker
So I think he's going to stay with the more manual setup just because he's so used to it. And I think once he gets a new machine as well, he's going to see just how much easier because he's running an older machine, the backlashes are out, you know,
01:33:46
Speaker
So it's like one of those things. I could go three times out and half a turn in, you know, to get it right. So yeah, it's, and that computer throws one more aspect in. Will it do? Absolutely. But are you going to get that benefit out of it? And is that going to help you really, you know?
01:34:09
Speaker
If you have a peace of mind, if you feel comfortable staying in that zone, you know, and you're not really gonna get a lot of added value. No, I can see if he was gonna say, oh man, I'm running all these things. They're like 300 feet jobs. Yeah, then that definitely makes a lot of sense. Cause now you're jumping around all day long, you know, and setting up tooling and whatnot. And that makes a big difference. You know, and then today you have a lot of stuff with HSK tooling and stuff too. So that makes it a lot easier. Cause that's basically a CNC.
01:34:39
Speaker
Chuck that you're popping into your motors. Yeah, molders are, that's not even anything we've ever even thought of.
01:34:52
Speaker
How, I mean, I guess, is it the knives that are still the most important elements? That's pretty much your biggest, you know, there's all types of different tooling, you know, for them. And depending on what level you get up to, you know, I, I ran some smaller motors for a couple of specific projects we did and we had all diamond.
01:35:12
Speaker
because it never changed and it did the same process all the way through. So something like that, you can go, but the diamond cutters are very expensive. Then you gotta be running a lot of that profile. We just happened to be running a high pressure laminate on an MDF with basically a miter lock assembly and it had to be super precision. And we would get six, eight months out of a set of cutters before sharpening.
01:35:39
Speaker
And we only ever had to adjust outboard side. Inboard side, we stayed the same. So that wasn't too bad. And we just made an adjustment on the outboard side. Yeah. Having dedicated, you know, whether it be a machine or whatever for one task is like a long way to go, you know? Yeah. Well, and that's what we had different assembly lines. So we had just specific equipment we built just to do.
01:36:08
Speaker
that one process and that's all it did all day long. You know, so if we had, and we had, you know, over the years we built actually a lot of custom equipment in it. That's what's nice with having our team machine. Cause we have that, you know, I was fortunate years ago. I had, I had a good machinist and a welder and a good electrician with controls, you know, in the early days. And now we have all that under one roof, you know, today to handle all that and our control guys are really second to none. You know, it's, it's amazing what they can,
01:36:38
Speaker
We had to cook up some kind of crazy machine. How can we make those boxes faster? What a machine that makes those boxes. That's actually would probably be pretty simple. Yeah, it's definitely impressive facility if you ever going for a field trip. That would be fun. Yeah, we got we got a lot of stuff on deck right now. So it's
01:37:01
Speaker
How far is it from falling water? I don't know where falling mortar is. I'm trying to think. I think that's out there pretty far. Yeah. Falling water is out. Like you have to go towards Pittsburgh. Oh yeah. No, no. Um, so we're north, like just north of 80. Okay. So I'm trying to think, you know, and then one 80 codes are scrambling. Like if we're going to Pulaski. Okay. Hughesville.
01:37:34
Speaker
Yeah, just a little town coming through. Nice though. Yeah. Is it like on the screen, the school goes through screen, right? Well, we're, we're another hour west. You can see. Oh yeah. Okay. Yeah. It's like Coleman County. Yep. Yeah. If you knew where grizzly was, that was, we were literally not even 10 minutes from there.
01:38:04
Speaker
Yeah. They're what? In Missouri. They're actually getting ready to tear that whole Lycoming mall down. Modify it. Yeah. I guess a couple of anchor stores are going to stay up there. Yeah. The age of the shopping malls. Is that more? Grizzly was in a mall. Is that what it was or? Well, the Lycoming mall was there. Then they had their buildings. I don't know what the square footage, but they're huge buildings because they had their distribution there and their whole showroom.
01:38:32
Speaker
I think, I think it probably would have made sense if it was closer to Harrisburg. That would have been probably made a lot more sense for them. Yes. You're probably two hours from Harrisburg. Hour and a half. Hour and a half. Yep. Yeah. It's not a bad trip at all. Rate up 15 and turns right into one. Just like a little Southwest. Yep.
01:38:53
Speaker
Yeah, because I went to school out in West Virginia, so I would take 476 all the way. Oh yeah. Altoona, get on 220 and then 68 or something. The party bars in the streets. Oh yeah. The beer bars we call them. Yeah, Morgantown. Fun town. Yeah. I'm still paying for all that fun. They give you a glass in those that already has lipstick and stuff on it. Oh yeah.
01:39:18
Speaker
You're lucky if you got glass, it wasn't plastic. That was in a few of those. College town, yes, where there is no breakable glass, it's always plastic. Yeah, the funny thing in Morgantown, it's like the bars, you only have to be 18 to get in, but you can't drink unless you're 21, you know, in quotations.
01:39:37
Speaker
Yeah, they had, well, back when I was there, it was definitely in the basement. You couldn't go to the upper bar that was on street level. You had to go to the basement bar. That was pretty rugged. One beer on tap. It was no choice. Ice House was a big one for on tap. Yeah, Wednesdays were penny pitchers. So a pitcher of beer was a penny. Then I went to school and this is like 2008.
01:40:03
Speaker
So I can't imagine, you know, it was probably had been a penny for 30 years. Yeah. It just never changed. Yeah. The last time I was there was like 87, 88 maybe. Yeah. So it was a long time. I wasn't even born. So good times. Yeah. It's a fun town. Yeah. My buddy had, he went to Pitt and he had on his Mustang said Pitt GT for license plate.
01:40:30
Speaker
And they were down there, Virginia for a game as somebody wrote this whole license plate up. Each shit pit. That's what it says. The backyard brawl. Actually, when I was a freshman, we lost a pit in the backyard brawl at home and it knocked us out. We were supposed to go to the NCAA championship and it knocked us out. It was that was a heartbreaker.
01:40:54
Speaker
I don't know if they still hold the ranking for the number one party school in the U.S. They were always in the top. Well, yeah, I've looked it up a couple of times. When I was a freshman, it was number one. I like to think that I had a small hand in that. But recently, I think I was talking to somebody about it. It was it was a different school. But yeah, it was like Playboy, I think, was the big one who did the rankings and it was like forever.
01:41:18
Speaker
It's funny because like on my Facebook profile, it said, where'd you study? It said BKU. Well, it's Bob Kraling University. I was never college material. Well, I didn't leave with a diploma. I'll put it that way.
01:41:33
Speaker
I did graduate, but it took me literally 20 years from the time I graduated high school, because I started and stopped so many times. Oh yeah, to get over the hump on it. You know, when you're working, you go, you go for a semester, two semesters, and you just can't do it anymore. Yeah, because you get a full boat going on. Yeah. Yeah. So 20 years, but I did graduate.
01:42:01
Speaker
So yeah, I dove into that and that was my education in the woodworking industry.
Podcast Experience and Listener Impact
01:42:10
Speaker
Well, we've been out of here for about an hour and 40 minutes. I feel like we just scratched the surface. I think so. We're going to have to have you come back again. Yeah. A lot of fun. Yeah. Maybe on delivery day we'll do it. Yeah. Oh yeah. Well, I'm out here every week. So whatever you want. Have you done other podcasts? No, first one. All right. You're a natural. Yeah. Yeah. I definitely feel honored to be on it.
01:42:37
Speaker
Some people sit down and they lock up. Yeah, we try and keep it, you know, no hard. Well, I studied actually. So I listened to your podcast. The funny thing is it's like stuck in my Spotify.
01:42:52
Speaker
So like every time I get in, no matter what car, your podcast comes off right away. I'm like, how do I get those downloads segways into one of my favorite episodes when we were delivering a piece of furniture and the wife says, Jeff says, had you hear about us? And the wife says,
01:43:15
Speaker
He's always listening to that stupid podcast. Like some guy in like finance or something. I always get a kick out of that. This month we'll hit 100,000 downloads. We're at about 98,000. So this month we'll tick over. If we send like half of them to me,
01:43:45
Speaker
pick the brain. Yeah. Yeah. No, I love it. It'd be awesome to have, you know, some more people with questions and stuff. Oh yeah. We'll get you some feedback. I'm sure this is going to be interesting. If you're even having trouble painting your hot rod, you know, I could deal in with that as well. And the, uh, my, my buddy's the painter as well. And, uh,
01:44:05
Speaker
He said it's like Russian roulette, but a slow death bodywork and paint because they're always changing the chemicals and stuff. And, you know, you got to be on your game. That's like Manny. Yeah. Tom over at TCC wants your Bondo tips. Yeah. But not for cars. There's more Bondo in that shop than a body shop sometimes. Yeah. He buys it in the big gallon cans. Ooh. Yeah.
01:44:30
Speaker
We won't make a comment because he's making sculptures. Yeah. Yeah. Nobody wants to know what he's doing over there after hours. It's bad news. Uh, but yeah, thanks for tuning in and we'll see you next week. Yeah. Take care everybody. Thanks.
01:44:48
Speaker
As always, Rob and I, thank you for tuning in and we'll see you next week. If you want to help support the podcast, you can leave us a review on Apple Podcasts. You can join our Patreon or you can use one of our affiliate links in the podcast description for vesting finishes. Again, we appreciate your support. Thanks for tuning in.
01:45:23
Speaker
Ain't no shame, but there's been a change