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Striebig, and Sawstop, and sanders. Oh, my.
3 Plays1 year ago
Today we're joined by Ron and Brian of RT Machine Company. Nearly 3 hours flew by with these guys!
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Greene Street Joinery is a custom design & build shop located in Monmouth County, New Jersey. We build multigenerational furniture with an eco-friendly and sustainable mindset.
Inspired and guided by the ideals of the Arts and Crafts movement, we believe in the use of traditional craftsmanship and simple, well-proportioned forms; sustainability and ethical practices; and importantly, taking pleasure in our work as craftsmen to create quality pieces of enduring value.
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Transcript
Introduction and Guest Welcome
00:00:22
Speaker
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the show. Uh, we're joined today by our new friends, Ron, new friend, Ron and Brian from RT machine company. Oh yeah. Welcome guys. Hi. Glad to be back. Nice to be here. Made you guys a nice shop.
00:00:41
Speaker
Oh, thanks. Nice edge pander, huh? That is a nice edge pander. Very nice. It's a work in progress,
Shop and Sponsor Highlights
00:00:50
Speaker
the chef. That equipment's okay, but that edge pander is really nice.
00:00:55
Speaker
Before we get too deep into it, we want to thank our sponsor, which I left my paper in the other room. Hayfla, you want me to go get it? I think I got it right here. I should know it by heart now. I know this looks LED. Let's see. 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.
00:01:18
Speaker
Sandpaper, wood glue, shop courts, and everything in between. Exclusive product lines such as looks, LED lighting, and slide of door hardware ensure that every project you create is built to last. Learn more at Hayfla.com. That's it. Nice. Nice job. That's what it's like being young. Just had to get the beginning of it. Memory works a lot better. Those synapses are firing. I got to use them now because they're wearing out. That's for sure. Not getting or feeling any younger.
00:01:47
Speaker
Um, so yeah, thanks Haefla. We had a, we had a great time. We went out to the, um, the Manhattan showroom.
Educational Experiences
00:01:55
Speaker
Was it two weeks ago? I think it was only a week ago. Last week. Oh yeah. Must have. Yeah. And did an led lighting class. Yeah. I heard you talking about that. Yeah. Yeah. Pretty good. Yeah. Yeah. We've got some lighting coming up. So
00:02:13
Speaker
Um, it was the, it was the, uh, the smoke day. Yeah. Oh yeah. It was bad. Yeah. I was coming down through it. Yeah. Where were you on Wednesday? Uh, Wednesday I was coming down from Plymouth, Massachusetts into Connecticut and then the top tier New York. So it was, was it worse up there? Oh yeah. So you guys, I hit like right at the edge of Connecticut and New York. It was, it was pretty,
00:02:40
Speaker
Pretty thick. My favorite Brian, just pull that mic. Yeah, just bring it out a little further. These are very directional. So if you talk like this, it's going to sound straight on. So what do you guys want to talk about?
RT Machine Company History
00:02:56
Speaker
We definitely want to know the history behind the company, how you got started, maybe expand on what Brian talked about, what you guys are all about, so on and so forth.
00:03:09
Speaker
I started right out of college. I graduated and my father was working for a company called Carpenters Machinery, which he was an independent rep. He was on the road and I was helping him out. And when I was in college and it just kind of progressed in that they hired me.
00:03:28
Speaker
So I started out as a traveling salesman. I was covering Pennsylvania, New York, putting a lot of miles on. And, uh, back in 1999, they decided to become an auction company. So I didn't want to do that. I didn't fancy myself an auctioneer. So I started my own company and, um,
00:03:44
Speaker
Started out with basically about the size of a three car garage and the first truck load and machinery filled it up and we were off and selling new and used equipment. So we became real big and used equipment because that's what I did at the other company a lot. And we expanded at that facility in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, kept picking up more and more space. We had half of the complex with equipment by the time we left.
00:04:09
Speaker
And then I think it was in 06. We bought the building in Hughesville and moved everything up there. And just, they told me I'd never fill it up 80,000 square feet. They said you'll be renting part of this out. Can't fill that up with all this equipment, but Brian can tell you.
00:04:28
Speaker
And then we're looking to add on. That's what we thought. We said 5,000 square feet. We're going to have to sub, you know, sub let this little spot, right? The office where, you know, we can get somebody in there to use that. Yeah. It adds up fast. Oh yeah. So yeah, we just keep adding to the company. And, um, I guess it was, uh, Derek started with us, what six years, six years ago.
00:04:52
Speaker
and started a service company, which we've needed for a long time, depending on independence and separate reps.
Business Expansion and Customer Relations
00:05:01
Speaker
It just wasn't working. So that's really expanded the company. We now, we operate that as a separate division. And I don't know, they must have seven or eight trucks and reps on the road. Servicing equipment's a big part of our business now. Service is where it's at. Yeah. Yeah. It was Josh, right?
00:05:24
Speaker
We've got some really good guys. That's, you know, how Brian got in here was more on, you know, we were looking for service on our old edge bander and unable to find anybody who would even be willing to really look at it.
00:05:42
Speaker
It's, it's a problem. We were, we were at a shop yesterday and he Sanders perfectly fine. Um, you know, and if we were pushy salesman, we would have just sold him a new one, but we're going to send a guy in there and fix it. I'm sure we can fix it. Yeah. That's a future sale though. Right. That's exactly what that is. We're all about, we're all about the future. It's not just here today and gone tomorrow.
00:06:07
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, we always need new stuff. We always want new stuff. And we say it all the time. We always go back to the people and the suppliers that we get a good feeling from. Initially, it doesn't matter if we're buying something or just talking to people.
00:06:27
Speaker
You have so many negative interactions with people day to day just calling a place, trying to ask a question. And so when you get a good feeling, typically you try and stick with those people because
00:06:44
Speaker
Right. And that's what we're looking for. We're looking for, uh, relationships and building those relationships for the future. My son's involved in the business. So, um, you feel like we're, and Brian's son, Derek is our service manager. So I think we're positioned for the longterm. Cool.
00:07:03
Speaker
Yeah. That's more like the European model looking, looking forward to, you know, a generation or two instead of, you know, the American model where it's quarterly. Right. Yeah, so really, you know, we're, we're really pushing the service, uh, as, as a whole of not just our texts coming out, but it's just that pick up the phone, whatever.
00:07:30
Speaker
you know, problem you may be having, you know, and we can walk you through it. Cause we have so many that have been in an industry, you know, and like myself and between service texts and that firsthand knowledge, you know, coming to the plate definitely makes a big difference. And if we're looking at the processes, so, you know, where a lot of people might say, Oh, you just need this. Well,
00:07:55
Speaker
I want to dig deeper and really spend your money wisely you know do we really need to do that or what is our alternative and what is the real scope of what you're doing is you know ninety five percent of the time you're you're doing x y z does it make sense to have this.
00:08:15
Speaker
other piece of equipment that you'd love to have it, but does it make it, you know, for profitability and really, and does it turn into a dust collector in the corner and you know, you got a big payment or something on, on something and it's just like, wow.
00:08:34
Speaker
And, you know, it's it's vital for guys like us because, you know, we're working our way up from the very bottom. You know what I mean? We bootstrapped from. So, you know, we might get an idea in our heads like, oh, man, we need a flatbed CNC. You know, we'll just use as an example.
00:08:53
Speaker
And, you know, you might come in and say, well, with having way more experience and we just have it stuck in our head, you know, we might go to machinery company X and they say, all right, here, we'll sell you this five by 10, whatever. And we talk to Brian and he'll say, well, really?
00:09:08
Speaker
And you might be better off with whatever, a point to point CNC or something like that, rather than just converting the sale because we're already, we sold ourselves on something, which, you know, it happens all the time. And that's what we look for. Somebody who can steer us in the right direction. Well, and that's what we're trying to do is find out what you're trying to accomplish so we can offer the right machine rather than just sell you what you want. Some people just want what they want. And at the end of the day, we'll sell them that, but we'd like to try to get involved in the process.
00:09:37
Speaker
Yeah. We've said it half a dozen times on the podcast. The service end and the relationship end of your guys' business is what made us decide to, you know, invest in you guys. Oh, I appreciate that. Because that's what it is. It's an investment for us. Absolutely. And it's already shown itself to be a good decision for us.
00:10:05
Speaker
You know, in getting the edge band or up and running all the time that Brian spent here, two real solid days. I mean, just working through the parts and then working through, then the connections, working through the soft stuff for the compressor. You know, without you, we don't get to Dan. We don't get that problem solved. Right. Right.
00:10:30
Speaker
Well, and that's part of what we're trying to promote. And sometimes it's hard to get people to understand that. You can't overvalue that at all. I mean, it's so integral, especially in a small company because otherwise it's downtime. Otherwise we have this edge band. There's brand new machines sitting over there that we can't use. Right.
00:10:52
Speaker
And we're finding it even in bigger companies because they rely on us. We're starting to get into putting lines together for the companies. We have the ability to draw the whole system from beginning to end and CAD drawing and show them how it's going to fit in their plant. We have the people that can come in and put it in.
00:11:10
Speaker
I mean, we've gone to the point of taking a complete optimizing cutoff saw system from one plant in Kentucky and reinstalling in another plant in Virginia. Customers didn't do anything. We handled the trucking and rigging. Those guys can do it all. That's sweet. Yeah. What would you say like the most unique machine that's ever come through?
00:11:35
Speaker
Well, that's a tough one. I'm sure there's been a lot. Yeah, there's been a lot of, we try to stay away from things that we don't know what they are, what they do. I think probably the most unique one was a little, it made little pucks. It was a little rotary shaper thing and nobody really knew what it was. And we figured it out. We sold it and went to Sri Lanka, kind of a weird one.
00:12:00
Speaker
I've been at this a long time and back in the old days, we used to go to furniture factories and they would have what they call a carton layback machine. Take a piece of furniture and it would have runners on the bottom. That's how you drug it around the plant. Well, when you go to box it up, you kind of got to get them off and put the box around. So we had a machine to actually lay it back, take them off, finish up the box and ship it. So I bought one one day. We're living in the Stone Age over there.
00:12:24
Speaker
I bought one one day and my son comes and he says, what the heck is that? And then luckily for me, I sold it like two weeks later. So yeah, we have seen a lot of machines around. I saw on your guys Instagram, an Oliver Dow, like a Dow making machine. Yes. Which I always figured they were made sort of in that fashion, but I never actually saw a machine that made them.
00:12:48
Speaker
Yeah. It takes a square and turns it into around the high rate of speed. Just a rotary head in there that just goes around like that in a circle. So it's one way to capture your waste into a saleable product. Yeah. You know, it's a nice little add on somebody saying we always have this one inch piece coming off, you know, we don't want to turn it into junk and
00:13:10
Speaker
It can actually go right to that machine and turn it into something, you know. Yeah. I've got a whole pile of, we have firewood pine cut offs back there. You can have really nice smooth firewood with the dash. Yeah, the nice round firewood. So yeah, we'll see. So we have the contest with the Stribig. Yeah.
00:13:36
Speaker
Yeah, we're excited about that actually. Yeah. Yeah. So, uh, colonial saw, they're giving away, nobody else enter because we don't want any competition. We're going to enter a five by 10 Stree Big. Was it compact? Compact. Yeah. With the digital readout. And so it's a, you know, a vertical panel saw. Very cool. Very cool machine.
00:14:00
Speaker
And Stravie is a leader in vertical panels. We'd love to have a pile of used ones, but we just, you can't find them. There's just, nobody's getting rid of them these days. I think Corey said what? The one shop he worked in had like six of them or something? Yeah. He's, he's got an interesting background. I'll say history. He's, he's run across a lot of stuff in his short time. Yeah. Yeah. I forget how many Martin Slider, he said that they had.
00:14:27
Speaker
Did you ever get out there to see him in Patchogue or? Not yet, but he's on the list to get over there. Yeah. He's in the market for a wide belt sander. He's looking at the can tech, but I'm sure he could be different, different direction. Just as we were with the edge. We're like, yeah, you know, probably just get one of these can techs. Oh, you're looking at the contact.
00:14:52
Speaker
And yeah, initially that because, you know, we wanted pre-milling. Pre-milling was like the must have feature was pre-milling. And we were just looking at basically bottom line for price. We're like, this is the cheapest machine with pre-milling that you can get. But then like talking to Brian and doing some research on our own, talking to some people that have the machines. You know, you get what you pay for. So. Right.
00:15:19
Speaker
You want to spend twenty eight thousand or do you want to spend double? Yeah. Yeah. And then the nature of the edge bander. And if you've ever seen an edge bander and all the little things that are in there moving, it's like it's like a Rube Goldberg. Yeah, exactly. A lot going on. Yeah.
00:15:41
Speaker
And, you know, you talk to people who run, you know, huge six figure edge banners and they're like, they're all like this. Yeah. That is correct. We're very careful in buying used ones. It's got to be a very late model one. It's got to be very clean because we can lose money in a hurry on a used edge bander. And trust me, we've done it. We're curious if the guy that bought ours has used it.
00:16:08
Speaker
Well, fell off the truck when he was getting there. So they dropped it. That's not good. Yeah. If it was a newer machine, it probably would have fallen apart. But luckily I think it was like a tank. Yeah. What kind was it? It was a 1996 KD 68. Okay.
00:16:26
Speaker
And, uh, Brian was very diplomatic when he came out to see it. So I tried to be, you know, what do you think Brian, we could fix this up, right? Well, I did. Didn't I laid out, you know, Hey, you guys could wrestle this thing a little bit and you know, you never know what anybody's capabilities are. And, uh, or some, most guys, you know, with,
00:16:51
Speaker
couple man team, you know, they, they just want to run. They don't, they don't want to be wrenching on something as well because you know, there's your, all your profit going out the door. And, and you know, as well as I do with plywoods and everything today, you don't want to be tearing up material that you don't have to. And it's a multi-step process to replace a piece. Yeah. Once it gets to the edge bander, then do you cut, you know, I'm going to cut two extra parts of every part.
00:17:21
Speaker
Yeah. And then, you know, you're talking about more material, more time, more stuff to keep track of. Yeah, absolutely. And that's where, you know, you guys win the street big. We'll clear a spot right out for it. We just got to get that three phase power over to wherever.
00:17:45
Speaker
We can do that. We know an electrician. Yeah. There you go. You're in the circle now. We'll just perform our own unlicensed electrical work. The RT circle. We keep our resources. That's it. You just need a phone call.
00:18:05
Speaker
Back in the eighties, when I lived in Brooklyn, I had, you know, my, my uncles were all connected. So whatever I needed, I would just make a phone call. Like, you know, back then you had to have like, like you can get your vehicle inspected. You just get like a sticker, you know, just like, you know, fiddle things. So my girlfriend at the time, she would say, I don't really like this whole thing till she needed something. And she was like,
00:18:33
Speaker
Oh, this is pretty good. You're connected. You make that phone call and it's like something can happen. You're in the family. You got to repay that favor someday though. Remember inspection sticker way back. That was when I moved out to California one time. I didn't have a license because through this
00:19:00
Speaker
bad set of circumstances. My license got revoked and I couldn't get a new one. They, so I needed to rent a truck. So they, you know, through this, these phone calls, they said, just show up here. Tell him who you are. I'll give you a truck. That's funny.
00:19:29
Speaker
Yeah. Um, those days are gone. Yeah. Yeah. You can't do stuff like that anymore. I don't think, you know, life. Yes. For me, you know, all my relatives have aged out of the system. Yeah. Full on retirement. That's right. That's right. But it's always good to know people as they say,
00:19:57
Speaker
So what have you been up to Brian since you, since we last heard from you? Oh my, the last few weeks I've been, feels like all over the country, but, uh, from up in Massachusetts to Connecticut and back into New York and Jersey and trying to, uh, service everybody we can and track down our leads. So it's been, uh, yeah, you got a pretty big territory.
00:20:21
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. I, uh, I enjoy actually being the, you know, a lot of people say, boy, do you like the drive? And I said, well, I actually love it. You know, it's, you get all over and you know, it's getting into all different shops. We get a lot of windshield time. Yeah. Sounds like sure.
00:20:38
Speaker
Yeah. Last week, I think I did like 40 hours within until like Wednesday night, you know, or the midweek, just early mornings to evening, but try to make the most of your time, you know, in the operating hours of the businesses. So you do all the oddball driving. What do you, what do you listen to when you're out on the road? Well, the green street joinery. That's one of them.
00:21:20
Speaker
It's a combination. You know, you listen to a couple of news channels till you get, you know, you want to jump off a bridge, listen to those. You switch into whatever playlist and you know, turn them off after a while. Yeah.
00:21:35
Speaker
Yeah, that's what I was thinking. Bring it up. Yeah, so it's a, I don't know what you would call it. It's like a, I guess it's like a podcast production company called Wundry. W-O-N-D-R-Y, I believe. And they have a bunch of different shows. I listened to one that was like on the Cold War.
00:21:54
Speaker
And then Rob and I listened to one on prohibition. So it was like a six episode, like real deep historical dive on prohibition. Like then they get.
00:22:05
Speaker
You know, you learn stuff that it's like, well, you know, like you always say, it's like, we didn't teach us this in history class. And it's like the whole show is like that. And I got a degree in history. Every five minutes I'm going, huh? When the history teacher's saying, oh, is that right? It's just done really well, too. You know, it's some narration. It's some sort of like skits. It's it's really well done. Yeah.
00:22:32
Speaker
And the, you know, the audio production is really high quality. What was it? The prohibition one, they're like, yeah, you know, prohibition is like lowered the drinking, the consumption of alcohol in the US by like 15 percent. It's like they completely outlawed alcohol and only dropped 15 percent. Yeah.
00:22:51
Speaker
You're like, wow, good work. Then it had all these other effects and then the relationship between the mob and the women's right to vote. I mean, it was all, it's really good.
00:23:06
Speaker
Yeah, I think when when the prohibition was enacted, they were they were having parties. Oh, yeah. You know, it's a drink up all the night to like, yeah. Yeah. Game on. Business is going to be booming now. It was like it's like anything, you know, all the people who had money, they had their alcohol. They, you know, they stocked up prior to the, you know, whenever the ban went into effect because they had some time leading up to it.
00:23:34
Speaker
So yeah, they had cases and cases of alcohol.
00:23:38
Speaker
Yeah. Cause I guess it wasn't illegal to drink it. Like if you're at home, you can drink. It's just, you couldn't sell it. You couldn't make it or what. I can't remember the exact specifications, but there are plenty of loopholes. If you actually had a, you know, a stockpile of, you could go to the doctor too and get a prescription for alcohol. So you're like, yeah, I'm having headaches. I can't sleep. And they're like, okay, I'll give you a prescription for. Well, that's going on now with the marijuana stuff. Yeah.
00:24:07
Speaker
How about a handle of whiskey a week? How about that? You know, and then they had to, I think what they, they banned the alcohol as a prescription. Yeah. Cause you know, it was obviously there was being abused. Yeah. Um, it doesn't happen now. Yeah. They were just tracking it that well.
00:24:30
Speaker
Um, I want to listen to the one we listened to these when we're doing the Hamptons run usually, cause we can get in like four or five, six episodes. Right. Yeah. Back to back. So you keep the story going. Exactly. You know, that's what's really good about it on the, on the long run. I w I want to listen to the one on the depression.
00:24:47
Speaker
Oh, yeah. Yeah. We started the civil rights one on the way back from the getting the compressor, but we never finished that last time coming back from the Hamptons. We listened to one that was about corruption in New York state. Oh, man. And it was like what, like the late 90s or early 2000 spitzer silver. And what was the be Joe Bruno or something? Yeah. It was like within six months.
00:25:17
Speaker
For i don't know what they were attorney generals or something i want was they were like the the leaders of the opposing party and the governor so they were like the three most powerful people in new york as far as government you know.
00:25:34
Speaker
They all went down on federal corruption charges within six months, all unrelated, unrelated things. That's hard to believe New York in a corruption. Yeah. And who would have thought? Yeah. There was like all the infighting too that was going on. It was, so it was really interesting and kind of infuriating to like here, like all these, you know, when you,
00:25:59
Speaker
When you're just a guy on the street, you know, there's corruption. But then when you hear the detail stories, it just makes you mad, you know, because you're like grinding away at work all day. And then you hear about like, oh, yeah, Joe Bruno used the New York State helicopter 462 times for personal. Yeah, they make these companies hire their kids or they're not going to pass the legislation, which isn't bad enough. And then they go,
00:26:27
Speaker
You're gonna have to give my kid a raise, even though he's got a no-show job. He's not making enough.
00:26:35
Speaker
Pretty crazy. Elliot Spitzer was like client 49 or something. You know, he was seeing prostitutes and that's why he resigned or whatever. Yeah. He was, you know, he came into office as like the taking the moral high ground. He was going to rid the governor's office of corruption and everything. And he's involved in this whole call girl thing. That's the way it always works. Yeah.
00:27:01
Speaker
He who smelt it dealt it. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Well, tell us why you guys want your, uh, would like to win this Stribich. Oh man. What's it going to do to help you out?
00:27:14
Speaker
Well, first off, I don't know if we said it on air or in our just earlier discussion, our panels, not our panels, our sliding table saw is not in the best condition. So we really need something that will help us break down sheet goods, you know, easily, accurately with repeatability.
00:27:38
Speaker
I mean, all the things that a cabinet shop wants to do with sheet goods. Yeah. Yeah. Especially since, you know, we have this adhesive edge banner now. It's like the sliders really the weak link in the whole plywood and she she could operation here, you know, is is that initial breaking it down on the slider is I mean, there's just so many things with that slider.
00:28:02
Speaker
Um, not being able to lock the table back and just not having stops that work properly. I mean, it thinks a mess. Yeah, that's what happens when you buy sight unseen. Not locking and you're chasing the panel around on, you know, I don't know what a sheet of three quarter melamine weighs, but it's heavy and it's hard to, it's hard to get it on there with that. It's exhausting. It really is. Yeah. Yeah.
00:28:31
Speaker
Yeah. Going into, you know, a five by nine. It's a scoring blade motor is like, it's wheezing. Yeah. It's wheezing. Yeah. Uh, it goes through belts. What's that, uh, door project you got going on out there? Would that be lend itself to it? Well, well, yeah, like, man, like you were saying, you could actually, so, you know, build the doors a little bit oversized and put them on there and get your, you know, square them up.
00:29:00
Speaker
Yeah. Cause usually we go to the tracks off or something like that. Um, we just built those barn doors and that's what we had to do. Yeah. And you know, you're talking about cutting with, uh, I don't even know what that Makita track. So the one third horsepower, maybe it's too bad versus, uh, yeah, it's 36 versus five, you know, five horsepower on that, that's streaming.
00:29:26
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. I like the idea of the orientation of the stock, you know, and moving, you know, the, the cutter, so to speak, instead of right. Try to pass the material through. Yeah. You're utilizing the accuracy of the salt to keep everything straight and square. And we just started getting into mosaic software, which speaks to machinery.
00:29:53
Speaker
Yep. You can bring your cut list and everything right to it, you know, so you can kind of preempt what you're doing. And I believe actually in there too, they, they do a thing for the sliders that
00:30:06
Speaker
They have. Yeah. So Mosaic has an optimizer and you can choose what type of machine you're using. So there is a panel saw option. I'm not sure. I guess it, you know, it just breaks them down differently, you know, knowing how that they, how it operates versus a slider. Yeah. Cause you're typically working.
00:30:24
Speaker
top down for the most part or, you know, or going into a crosscut depending on how, you know, I'm a big fan of a lot of the stuff coming from a crosscut if it lends itself, you know, especially with cabinet sides and things like that, you know, makes it just easier to handle and not moving the panel so many times. So you think on a regular cabinet job, how many rips did you do before you got into your crosscuts?
00:30:51
Speaker
When we did those, the bookcases that we edge banded, when we set up the edge banner, it was 26 sheets, all ripped at, was it 18 and we had that leftover? Yeah. So two 18 inches. Do you compress straight from that? Yeah.
00:31:18
Speaker
Yeah, it was heavy. You just manhandle the panels up onto your slider now. What I like to do is, so I'll pick them up with the forklift and I drive the forklift right to, you know, the very back of the, um, the sliding table and I'll have it at the height where I can just drag it on there. And it works pretty good, but you know, you hate to drag that stuff around. Well, yeah, that's, that's a big, big benefit that you're not, especially with these exotics and stuff that are,
00:31:45
Speaker
we're dealing with now, you know, much more heavy wood grains and things and you don't want to be getting the, you know.
00:31:51
Speaker
cross cutting and grooving, you know, the bottom of the panel. Spinning it around, you know, go from rip to cross cut. You got to turn that sheet around and it's like a little jag or something on the, on the, well, you don't realize how many steps you're doing of running around the back of the saw, you know? So then you think, Oh, did I just set that right? Now you're running back to the fence side of the saw, you know, so there's, there's a lot of benefits that
00:32:20
Speaker
Oh, yeah, it's all front loaded, so to speak. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And you're yeah, like if I so like let's say I'm cutting cabinet sides for like a kitchen. So you rip it to 24 or whatever and then you want to cross cut to 31. Well, that first cross cut, you know, I want to use the I don't want to use the fence as my stop because the last piece is going to be awkward to cut. You know, you can use it as a bump stop, but
00:32:43
Speaker
I hate setting the fence, you know, the rip fence and the the wing fence, whatever you want to call it, on the sliding table, trying to set them as the same thing, you know, so that I can get my first cut with the bump stop on the rip fence and then finish it. So now I have to cut that piece oversized. I got to turn it around. I got to, you know, yeah. Whereas you have your four by eight on if it's a four by eight panel, you're cutting your you can leave
00:33:11
Speaker
the excess right on the machine and then go to the mid-fence and now you're working at a level where you're not having to bend down or what have you and knock that panel down into whatever sizes you're doing and then just keep going with your panel without having to. So you're really getting it to a point where you're
00:33:31
Speaker
you're just lifting off the small pieces. Yeah. You know, depending on what the job is. Yeah. I mean, that machine's got, it's got a lot of cool stuff to it. It has that little bearing that goes over so you can do repeatable rips. You know, you could, you could set it to whatever, say four inches and
00:33:49
Speaker
and just keep referencing the top and go down to, you know, get consistent rips and even just like has little wipers on the bearings that go around the bearings on on the axes that keep the dust from getting inside. Yeah, they thought of a lot of stuff that's, you know, just makes for that daily maintenance and it's not not hindering the machine as you're going. Right. It's a precision instrument. It's not it's not the thing that you see at the lumber yard.
00:34:18
Speaker
Well, and that's what everybody always thinks. Right. You know, first off, yeah, it's it's definitely precision for sure. Yeah, it's not like a six and a quarter inch Makita circular saw. It's like bolted to some some round frame. No stops. No hold downs. Just let it rip. There's a video. That one of the big things as well. Yeah.
00:34:40
Speaker
you know, you're not, you're not getting your hands anywhere near a blade, you know, going through it. So it's, that's a big key factor. And you know, cause everybody, and the more you get fatigued through the day that percentage can climb, you know, you know,
00:34:57
Speaker
Yeah, and cutting anything on the slider, like more narrow than say four inches, it gets real dicey with the dust shroud and it starts getting into the rip fence and we don't have a riving knife and the rip fence is, they seem shorter than like on a normal cabinet saw. So just like on that outfeed, you just always, you're expecting something to catch. Yeah, right.
00:35:26
Speaker
Yeah. And then, you know, it's, it's kind of a little slower than just a typical table saw on a slow grip. If you're doing it on the slider, whereas this it's right there in front of you and the dust collection. That's the other thing. A lot of people don't realize that dust collection is fantastic because it's all encapsulated, you know, and then you have very little, so just your working atmosphere of not having to breathe, you know, a lot of that material. That's pretty cool. Cause on the slide and a lot does come off the top of the saw.
00:35:56
Speaker
Yeah. And, you know, let's say you need to take four inches off of a sheet with the panel saw. You're just taking, you know, you're just taking this off with the slider. You're pushing 44 inches on the other side. Makes you not want to do it. Right. It's like, is there, do I have a small piece laying around the shop? Is there another way I can do this? Exactly. Instead of dragging. It turns it into a chore.
00:36:21
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. You know, to try to muscle this whole sheet just to take, you know, a little piece of toe off of it. Yeah. I like the I mean, to me, my thing, I haven't used a panel saw a great deal. I started in my little shop breaking down, you know, sheets with just a circular saw until I could get them, you know, onto my little table saw, my Unisaw. Yeah.
00:36:49
Speaker
So, I haven't used it enough to be comfortable with the body positioning on the panel saw. I know people swear by it on the slide. It just feels awkward to me. You have that extension on the side that you can't stand where you would typically stand on the cabinet saw.
00:37:15
Speaker
And that overall blade guard, that, that shroud is like, it's huge. You mean you take the factory supplied, uh, blade guard off of your sauce? And those little anti kickback, uh, things, I swear it's safer.
00:37:35
Speaker
Yeah, in some ways, I think it is. For an experienced person, if someone was to come in and put all those on the saws, on the cabinet saws overnight, we'd probably be less safe trying to work on the saws. Right.
00:37:51
Speaker
I mean, we had, I mean, our habits and everything like that are tuned into there not being a guard, you know, using push sticks and push blocks and, you know, not taking silly chances, putting your fingers too close to the blade and all this other stuff.
00:38:09
Speaker
Well, and that's, that kind of lends into, you know, with the safety, but also slowing your production down because you're concentrating on that. Then you're also trying to think of what might, what was my last measurement that I was doing? You know, so it's like, Oh, okay. Where was it? And that, how many times you go check your fence again, just cause you were doing something else and walked away from it. And where's that piece of wood? I had that measurement written down on. Yeah, that's me. And then if I get interrupted, forget it.
00:38:38
Speaker
Yeah. That's shot. You know, it's like, as long as I can get in my little zone and go, all right, 26 and seven days, cut that. Then I got my 13 and 15, 16 coming up. And you know, you're just talking to yourself mentally and you can, you do it. But then you'll say, Hey, Rob, can you help me lift this? It's like, I got four pieces standing up against the wall. What was I got? You know,
00:39:04
Speaker
Yeah. That's the worst thing about the slider is, you know, I might have, like I was saying, we did that job 26 sheets. So now I have 50, 54, 18 inch rips that are stacked up before I can start cross cutting stuff. Right. It's crazy. Yeah. So yeah, tremendous benefits with it. Yeah. Not only the accuracy, just everything we just talked about that, you know, makes a whole world of sense. Plus the safe, the space savings, you know, which everybody has.
00:39:33
Speaker
premium of that anymore, you know? Yeah. Easy use, safety, you know, those are, you don't, you don't talk about those things. They're not as glamorous as some of the other things, but they're right at the very top of what you need to do to run a business like this.
00:39:52
Speaker
I saw you, you have a saw stop out there to safety. Yeah. You guys just became. Yeah. We just became a dealer for them. We love saw stuff. I mean, we even have, uh, we've used it two or three times, but we even have the little job site. So yeah, we keep in the van. Oh, can't beat it. Keep those fingers. I just noticed you guys have all of you. That's when you're likely to do something sketchy, you know, on the job. Yeah.
00:40:19
Speaker
Yeah. I can just inch this a little bit. Here you're in a controlled environment on the job site. When that's all comes out because something didn't quite go as planned. We have to rip something on site. Yeah. Yeah. Something's not right.
00:40:36
Speaker
Yeah. Now they've really taken over the table saw market, you know, little unisols, like you mentioned earlier, can't, you can't really get rid of them anymore. We don't buy them. Um, we've been saying this ever since we got it. Uh, we have the industrial, um,
00:40:52
Speaker
It's a it's a better saw regardless of the safety features. Yeah. It gets a lot of flack from, you know, like experienced professional guys. They're like, I don't need that. Well, you know, you should be able to pay attention. Blah, blah, blah. Even if it didn't have that build quality on that saw, it's it's way better than that. You know, so it is nice. Yeah, it is. Absolutely. And it's not like
00:41:21
Speaker
For me, it's the old school, like, oh, man, I don't want to be the chump that sets off the thing. And then it costs us a hundred and whatever dollars to do it. And then the blades probably shot, you know. So it's not like your cavalier running the sauce stuff. Right. You're crazy if you're doing that. Yeah. You don't really want to test it. No. Who would do that? That's crazy. Yeah. Like if, you know, if they came out with a car that
00:41:50
Speaker
You know, you could and you couldn't get hurt in a crash, would you say? I don't need that. I don't go running into a wall. Yeah, I don't crash my car. You might. Yeah, somebody might crash into you. You don't know, you know.
00:42:06
Speaker
There's like a machismo thing about it where it's like, I don't need that safety feature, but hopefully we don't need it either. But in the event that we do, that was always a little bit unexpected. I didn't understand that there would be people out there that sort of made fun of the, the safety mechanisms. Yeah. I never, I didn't hear that. I never heard that before. So I'm surprised, you know, maybe not the safety mechanism, making fun of the people who use them.
00:42:37
Speaker
as being less than, you know, in some capacity because you have it. Well, I think a lot of that old mentality is fading. Most people are dying off, I think. The thing about safety is you don't know you need it until you need it. Told the guys they were talking, we don't make them wear safety shoes around the shop, but now they are. And the one guy goes, well, we haven't had a problem until you have the problem.
00:43:06
Speaker
Now we won't know if we would have had a problem because you're just going to drop something on your foot and be fine. It's funny because, you know, being all the years in the shop, I'm so in tune. I still wear my steel toes and stuff, you know, outside just doing stupid stuff.
00:43:23
Speaker
It was funny because Derek years ago he had a landscape business when he was a kid and I always made him wear steel toes and stuff when he was he was down at the one Marina cutting with one of the big.
00:43:38
Speaker
weed whackers, but with the saw blade on it. And he was cutting down all these saplings and stuff. Well, on the one day the grass was a little wet in the morning and he slipped, fell back. The saw blade bounced off the steel toe. Oh my God. And you know, that was a good lesson.
00:43:55
Speaker
13, 14 years old. Oh, yeah. That, wow, that's actually pretty right on this kind of stuff. You never know. We were just driving down. I watched this guy with a with a walk behind zero turn. I went in flip flops. Oh, and I just I just cringe every time I see that kind of stuff. It's like the guys are riding their motorcycle in shorts. Yeah, I might have. I might have.
00:44:26
Speaker
If you've ever seen some road rash. Oh, I've had it too. So yeah, it's not fun. Yeah. When I was a kid, I was in a motorcycle accident. I was hit by a car head on and a helmet saved my life. Oh, absolutely. So I've always been a believer in the helmet. Yeah. There's no doubt about it.
00:44:48
Speaker
just the simplest bang. You had hitting the pavement, it's not going to end well. No, never does. No, and the way people drive, that's it. It's not the biker, it's the person in the car. Yeah, watch what you're doing. Yeah, there's no respect for the biker out here at all, I noticed. No, and it's getting worse, because people just don't understand.
00:45:18
Speaker
I think the bikers out here too though are a little bit less than courteous I'd say. Oh yeah, I was on the Garden State the other day and I was prepared for, but these two guys on a little, you know, crotch rocket style bikes, they split lanes between, I'm in the slow lane with the wife and they split lanes between me and like a van.
00:45:46
Speaker
Yeah, I was on my way here. Might have been Monday, you know, 615 in the morning. And there's, you know, there's not congestion, but there's like a little bit of traffic, you know, people going to work and stuff, people that commute into the city, I guess. Guy on a big Harley, like a, you know, full dresser. Yeah. Split and lanes. You know, up Highway 36, 615 in the morning, like, you know.
00:46:11
Speaker
In California, I was a big lane splitter. You ever find that all these things come back to haunt your life? I used to laugh when I would go down the block setting off car alarms. I remember those days like, because you could go down those narrow streets on your bike and you'd leave a trail of car alarms going off.
00:46:52
Speaker
When I was a teacher, I used to catch myself doing that stuff all the time, you know, like having kids. I'm like, all right, count to 10 because you were twice as bad as that. Isn't it funny how the tides turn.
00:47:06
Speaker
These people talking while they walk past my house.
00:47:10
Speaker
It is. It's a strange phenomenon, but it's, it's healthy. If you catch yourself, you know what I mean? You can laugh at yourself a little bit and go, yeah, yeah. That was me on that end. Now it's me on this end.
00:47:25
Speaker
Some things never change. No, no, get wiser. Yeah. Um, you know, hopefully we all can get old and remain healthy and, you know, live through that change that the arc of life.
00:47:44
Speaker
It's a little slower for sure. Yeah. That is slow. Yeah. You get more deliberate. I found that that's the way I would put it. Like, um, I have to be more deliberate as I'm aging. Yeah. Um, and Jeff still in that, uh,
00:48:05
Speaker
I don't know what you guys are kind of talking. I'm pretty old. He's an old soul. He's young, but he gets it. I got all the youth out of me a long time ago. When you come from a place where you work growing up, it's different than if you just hit the working world after you've like graduated college or something. Jeff's one of those that's worked his whole life.
00:48:35
Speaker
before working age. I know that feeling too. Yeah, you know, got a lot of miles.
00:48:44
Speaker
Yeah, working in the restaurant industry and stuff like that. That'll teach you some good work ethics too, you know? Yeah, it's always hustle and bustle. It is, it is. And there's all the partying that goes along with it. It's like, you're doing both of those at the same time. I just reached the point where it's like, okay, I'm burnt out. Like now. You decide to go with the work part and party for that. You peg the fun meter. Because you can't, you can't keep up anymore. Yeah. And you see, you know,
00:49:14
Speaker
You know, if you go out to like bars and restaurants, you see these guys who are career, like a career bartender, a guy in his like late 40s, early 50s or something. You're like 60. Yeah, you've had a hard run. Yeah, we did get a couple of questions from people. Let's see. I'm hearing my took some screenshots.
00:49:42
Speaker
So this, we have two from our buddy Corey. That's the guy in Patchogue. I'll just read both. What do you look for in used machinery before you buy them? And what's the process of fixing up a used machine you guys plan on selling?
00:49:58
Speaker
Oh, you know, every machine is going to be different, but when we go out and look at a machine, we know the wear points, like on a gang rip. So I always walk up to it and open up the little door and I stick my hand in there and I feel the pins. Um, you know, we ask questions of the previous owner, hoping we get an honest answer. Um, so it's, it's all about the condition, what we can see, what we can find out about, if we can see it run, things like that. It's, uh, and we make mistakes.
00:50:28
Speaker
And we've had a lot of people tell us it's a great machine. It works great every day and we get it home and we plug it in and it won't even come on. We bought two of those. Yeah. So, but yeah, that's, that's, and I would think a buyer, a customer like yourself that would be looking at a used machine, it comes, if you're going to do the smart thing, in my opinion, you would buy it from somebody like us who does test it out, does guarantee it, does supply the support for the machine.
00:50:57
Speaker
Believe me, we looked when we were in the market, but sliding table saw is apparently very hard to come by. Yeah. And a lot of people buy at auction and stuff. And then at that point you're, you're kind of, it's on your own to go out and inspect the machine. These days a lot of them are online and they just sit there and click the button and they get what they get. That's what we did. Yeah. Yeah.
00:51:19
Speaker
So in our process with selling used machines, it's, it's, you know, we always tell people, we'll buy, we'll sell it to you any way you want it. We'll sell it to you as is where we just guarantee that it's a, uh, Alton door sliding table saw. And that's all I guarantee. And from there you're on your own and you got 30 days to bring it back. You know, that's.
00:51:38
Speaker
Kind of the standard. To the point where we'll just clean and check it, where we tell you what we found. It needs a bearing here. It needs a electrical component there. And we tell you what's wrong with it and you buy it that way. Where we do the completely refurbished, where we bring in the shop, everything's gone through, fix what needs fixed, and we guarantee its operation when it goes out.
00:51:59
Speaker
We have a full shop of technicians. We power machines up right now. We're in the process of rebuilding a, what they call a Harlan laminator. It's a high speed top and bottom paper laminator. New ones probably cost three or $4 million.
00:52:16
Speaker
Oh my God. And the guys are tearing it right down to the frame, sandblasting and repainting. And we actually modified the machine. We actually upgraded the machine while we're doing it and put all new electronics on it. Um, I think it's a 10 or 12 month project.
00:52:36
Speaker
We have guys that can do just about anything. That's an amazing amount of knowledge to be able to do something like that. Yeah. Cause there's, I mean, how many machines are there like that out there at any given time?
00:52:48
Speaker
Well, there's I don't know how many are in operation, but there's only one other one for sale and I actually have that one, too. But, yeah, there's there's not a lot and there's not a lot of companies that can do what we're doing to the machine. Right. Yes. And when there's so few of them, I mean, the now the the number of people who have knowledge is so much smaller than something like a cabinet. So that's right.
00:53:14
Speaker
And most of the people that have knowledge of those are the ones that are using them every day, but they're not going to help the next guy. And the company that we're doing this for actually has like four of these things now, but they don't have time to rebuild it on their own. So they're, we're kind of doing it at their direction. They wanted to look this way, do that. And they're working right partners. You know, we're hand in hand with them. They're coming in next month to do a progress inspection.
00:53:38
Speaker
That's pretty amazing because you guys are doing this on one hand. You know, there's multi-million dollar venture and then, you know, you're working with people like Jeff and myself, you know, two guys on Main Street, Keensburg.
00:53:53
Speaker
That's right. And we, we, you know, so I told somebody the other day, we'll do anything from selling the table saw to a machine that's bigger than your house. You know, like just that, that laminator, for instance, I, what is that? Probably a hundred feet long. And then just the sheer height of the machine, you know, it's a building. Yeah, it really is.
00:54:17
Speaker
And then when you get in all the, you know, safety walks, the crossovers, you know, that, that are attached to this whole machine. It's, it's pretty, pretty incredible. We'll get you some good pictures of it. Yeah. Yeah. With a person so we can see the scale, might be able to get it diagonally in the shop. The hypotenuse on a 70.
00:54:37
Speaker
You guys got to make a field trip up to see us. Yeah, that would be fun. Yeah, we had some guys in the other day and they said we just didn't realize how big the place was. I mean, we put out all the pictures and we even have a video with the drone flying through and stuff. But until you walk through and see all that equipment, you really you really don't get a feel for it. Sounds like fun. Yeah, it is. Yeah, we had Bob Shafer from Pheasant Hall was up and we're we're actually getting
00:55:07
Speaker
doing a partnership with, with pheasant and Wilson art because of the gluing equipment and everything that we do. And, you know, we do so much reconditioning of blue spreaders and you name it through the whole, whole gamut. And they were really looking for somebody that they could trust. And of course I've, I've known Bob for 30 plus years myself. And we've, we've been dealing with back when he worked at Wilson art international and then came on with pheasant hall. Uh,
00:55:35
Speaker
the wealth of knowledge that we have there with all the glue applications and the right products for what you're trying to do. And like we're working on right now, we have a couple of customers that they're trying to get away from contact, spraying contact for their panels. And we have like a base.
00:55:53
Speaker
spray unit that's diaphragm pump, you can pump right off a five gallon pail. And the nice thing about that is instead of spraying with contact, you're on one board that's got a face and a backer product on it, you're spraying each sheet four times to make that panel. Whereas this, you're spraying it twice and you're into a PVA product that's tremendously cheaper. To give you like a spread, a lot of people are using a container
00:56:21
Speaker
based, you know, like propane bottle thing today. And to go to spraying something like this, you're looking at 65 cents of bonded foot, you know, in a canister to a six to $12 cent square foot, you know, and then the bond strength is, you know, you're on a permanent style bond. So just the portions of the product
00:56:47
Speaker
And you don't have to breathe in all that fumes from the car. Exactly. You know, that's the other thing. So not only your cost that in a glue itself, typically, you know, from some of the preliminaries that we've done, you could save $31 per sheet.
00:57:06
Speaker
And you were telling us about like what people get to like do those layups. And like, we were shocked at how little it is. If you can save $31 a sheet, like you can be doing, that's like a lot better. Economy and skills. It's a nice partnership because they, you know, they cover, you know, pretty much half of Pennsylvania and then New York and a bottom side of New York and Jersey. And then we do out in Delaware and Eastern Shore, Maryland. So.
00:57:35
Speaker
And then with the relationship there with Robert Boons from Wilson Art, he's our main regional. We have the outreach to our Ohio and Southern people, salespeople as well. So I think it's going to be a good fit. They're excited about it.
00:57:52
Speaker
Yeah. It was very interesting stuff. I had never even see people spraying the contact cement and you just like, okay. But I didn't realize how much it was costing them to do that. Yeah. And all that over, you know, overspray goes everywhere. Oh yeah. So my son said, Oh, I really liked that pink look when I walk into a shop. Smells really, really good. There is something fun about, you know, spraying that stuff, but
00:58:17
Speaker
It's like silly string. Yeah. Right. You don't have like a ton of experience doing it, but I always found that like you would get failures sometimes and you just didn't know why.
00:58:27
Speaker
Well, not only are you spraying in the air, now you have that open time before you can bond the two pieces together. So that's pretty huge air. Now you have the dry time of the PVA, but you're actually getting a much stronger bond and a more consistent bond. So from the bottom side, so a shop like yourselves, you could spray the PVA, run it through a pinch roller, and then everything's just dead stacked.
00:58:52
Speaker
So it's just the next panel that's coming on top of it. Then, you know, you just that the last panel that comes off, you just throw another blank three quarter or whatever, you know, on top and, you know, you let that sit for, you know, an hour or two hours. We always recommend longer, you know, everybody's about the speed, but you're building stress into the panel no matter if you're spraying a flammable, a non-flam, or putting a PVA product down that
00:59:19
Speaker
what your, that stress is in the panel until it totally settles itself out. We've always used a rule of thumb of like 48 hours is like optimum. So if you're going to go start knocking that panel nut, is it dry sooner? Yes. Is it going to cause you
00:59:35
Speaker
more issues doing it sooner? Yes. You know, not only from knocking that panel apart, we were talking about that bow, you know, from lengthwise in that panel that you're cutting apart, you know, then now you're going over to the edge-banning machine and now you have this part that's got a hook to it. You know, so the more you can let something stay and work around that, you know, the big thing is really the cost and the health factor, you know, going to a PVAO.
01:00:01
Speaker
Yeah, I think so. So just the weight of the sheet itself is enough for that bottom. Yes. So what you're getting is it's considered a contactable PVA. So the one that would be prominent that can spray or go through a roll coder is WilsonArts 3000.
01:00:21
Speaker
We can spray other products and obviously roll coat any of them. But now you're talking about different viscosities and things. So once you get into a roll coder and you're doing top and bottom panels, that's where you start playing with.
01:00:36
Speaker
different glue numbers that have different viscosity levels. So depending on the irregularity of the product you're running. So now if somebody's primarily running a plywood based material, most of it's pretty good, but you're always going to get something going on. So you want to keep your viscosity higher. So you get a little bit thicker bond.
01:00:54
Speaker
you know, in that. And typically they're all being bonded, you know, like a seven grams, seven mils is what we go by for the application. It's pretty common no matter what the viscosity is. Cause it's all relevant to whatever viscosity they're using for that product. The machine lays it all out. Right. So it basically is, it looks like a pinch roller with, you know, either a doctor roll to it or a tray base.
01:01:24
Speaker
and you're basically rollcoating on. So a lot of people, if you don't have a lot that you're doing, the rollcoater, the cleanup time and things like that is a little bit more to contend with. But as far as the glue waste, you don't really waste all that much glue, because when you're actually firing up the line and then when you're running down, you kind of gauge how much material is going down in that trough or the rollcoater, the Dr. Roller too.
01:01:53
Speaker
gauge kind of where you're at. So you have least amount of, you know, and the other thing too, is we always kept like a, you know, another container right there. So before we cleaned up for the day, we scooped out, put that in the container, then we used it for,
01:02:08
Speaker
glue bottles and things throughout the shop, but just general assembly glue and stuff. So, you know, it can be utilized for all kinds of stuff. A little more high tech than the way we do it. We take the gallon of glue and dump it on the, then do some nice four inch rollers. And then slide in the vacuum bag. Well, and that's what's nice too with, with that spraying of it, it's, it's really quick. Um, and especially if you have the vacuum bag,
01:02:35
Speaker
you know, to do it, that you're already there. Yeah, you know, yeah, with the little, you know, we use like a whiz roller, find that it's, it's so hard to get a consistent amount of glue out. You know what I mean? Well, that's, that's, that's what happens with the spray equipment, the spray and or rollcoater. So no, but most shots would, would benefit, you know, if they're,
01:02:54
Speaker
doing minimal layups, you know, that the spray equipment makes sense. And, you know, we use it for a lot of stuff where we were bending MDF products and things like that in a jig or in your, in your bag unit and makes it that you can just, you know, and the nice thing is, is you can just let it, you know, it's, you're not, your glue is not going bad from it. It's minimal cleanup and it's water cleanup.
01:03:19
Speaker
So a lot of benefits all the way around. Yeah. Yes. Things, you know, just like gluing the edges of boards do, you know, edge to edge glue ups. You don't think about how much time that takes, but then forget the name of the company. It starts with an R, I believe.
01:03:35
Speaker
You know, they have the the pressurized glue pot with the little roller, you know, like how much time would that save over the course of a year? Like it's insane when you start to get into these really specialized tools, like how much time you could save. And in a big shop, it's yeah, exponentially more. But oh, yeah. Well, like a little common thing like that is just to use the small little trough. Glue spreader, glue spreader. Oh, yeah. A little little cat hopper at the top and
01:04:05
Speaker
Well, they do those or it's a little pan with a roller in it. You put the glue in there and you just take your piece across the roller. If you're doing a lot of boards, that's going to help you out a lot. We're consistent too. Faster than your finger. Yeah. Believe it or not. You don't get to peel all that glue. That's in your downtime. You peel the glue off from the pretty good.
01:04:31
Speaker
Yeah, I tried like a little brush. I mean, I'll use a brush every now and again, the acid brush. And I tried using those silicone brushes in the past. I wasn't happy. The finger is always the best, unfortunately. Yeah, I don't even spread it. I just, you know, I put a nice bead in the center and make sure that when it goes together, that it's still in the hole. Did we answer that other question from Corey? What did he? It was.
01:05:02
Speaker
What's the process of fixing up a used machine? That was a second.
01:05:07
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, we test it first. So if we're going to totally recondition it or whatever, we bring it in and we plug it in and we test it and we get a condition report. And if we're going to recondition the machine, we know what parts we need. So we order those parts and then they're staged. And then when the machine comes together, we have the parts and the machine and we take it all apart, clean it, paint it, whatever we're going to do, then put it back together.
01:05:35
Speaker
Inevitably, you find something else that you missed because these machines are not, you know, and that baby did it. Yeah. I mean, you get inside the machine. It's like, Oh, we didn't know that bearing was better. We didn't know that shaft was worn that much. So that can delay the process. When we get to that point where you, yeah, you fix one thing and end up breaking something else. That always happens. Well, it's like changing airlines. If you start changing one airline, then that one blows and then that one blows. A lot of times we just, we just replaced it.
01:06:05
Speaker
with that exact circumstance. That old edge pander, it was, yeah, replace one. That just increased the pressure enough to blow the next one. And yeah. Yeah. It's like, where's that sound coming from?
01:06:20
Speaker
Let's see. We have one more question. Then actually I have one to ask about the Oliver thing. Can they discuss tools or brands to avoid due to reliability or ones to not pass up? Like I guess if you saw you saw this for sale used like something that you would definitely buy.
01:06:43
Speaker
As far as a machine, I could, I could rattle off lots of machines that I would, most people wouldn't know what they are, but you know, we, anything late model in a CNC machine, whether it's a panel saw or router, yeah, we would, we would definitely not pass it up if we could get it for the right price.
01:07:01
Speaker
You know, we, we're, we're big into solid wood stuff as well. So gang rips, molders, any of that kind of stuff is, is in our wheelhouse. And those, those are the things that we would, but you know, a particular customer, it depends on what he does, you know, um, the things that we don't buy a lot of used are edge banders, uh, um, for the reasons why you, you know, it has to be really nice for us to venture into it.
01:07:30
Speaker
Mm hmm. I'm not sure if that answers the question. It's kind of a hard question. Yeah. Yeah. Because what you guys do is so broad. You know what I mean? Yeah. Um, but he did say, uh, Oh yeah. Well, I guess you would avoid edge banners, but any, any manufacturer specifically, you know, not necessarily edge banners, but, um, yeah, any tools or brands to avoid due to reliability. I don't know. Cause it really depends on, you know, how that machine was
01:08:00
Speaker
run, you know, as far as a used machine, new, I'd revert back to staying with a dealer like ourselves that are servicing and, you know, and give you the track record.
01:08:17
Speaker
Every manufacturer that we've worked with, or that we know about, probably has had issues. But I can't say that there's one out there that I would just, I mean, I don't want to throw myself under the bus either, quite honestly, because we have... Ryobi, just Ryobi. That's funny because Sal, and Sal's got a lot of Ryobi. Sorry Sal, it wasn't a...
01:08:40
Speaker
But we work with all of them. We buy parts from them. We get advice from them and fixing machines. And we have good relationships with almost all of the importers, even though we don't sell their stuff new because we do so much used equipment. I wanted to ask you guys about, you know, what you're doing with Oliver and straight up playing and all that stuff.
01:09:02
Speaker
So yeah, we, um, I guess it was about two years ago now. Uh, we purchased the pre-1999 Oliver. Uh, so we, we bought the rights to the machines, the parts, and we have all the manuals and so forth. So we made, we named it straight a plane because the big machine that we were working on and still do are this planers, the double-sided.
01:09:25
Speaker
straight up planes. But we sell the parts even for their little shapers and table saws and lathes and joiners and stuff like that. So yeah, that's worked out really well for us. We actually have a whole division set up for that. We have the parts, we have a couple of rooms in the building with racking in it with all the parts. And we have one guy who's at his full-time job now. John is doing that all the time, fielding calls and
01:09:52
Speaker
Back when, when the other company had it, I think they called themselves Eagle something. It was a brother and sister and they were getting tired of it. So sometimes you'd call up there and they wouldn't call you back for a week or sometimes longer. That's got to be like a, you have to care, you know, you're going to hold the rights to a vintage machinery maker. Like you had got a
01:10:13
Speaker
You got to really be into it. And I think they were, you know, they were just aging out. They were really looking towards retirement. So we were buying a lot of parts from him because we had rebuilt a couple of straight up lanes. And one day he said to our guys, you guys ought to buy me. You're my biggest customer. So we did. Our buddy Matt is up in Connecticut. He has a, uh, an old Oliver 16 inch joiner and a 30 inch planer.
01:10:40
Speaker
It could be. Yeah, I think so. And he reached out to you guys and I think you guys are getting him like birth certificates and stuff. Yeah. And that's, I didn't, I actually didn't even know about that. Cause I was, uh, I see the emails coming into them. I used to, I stopped doing that. I used to see the ones coming into the sales and, uh, some guy asked for a birth certificate and I chuckled and I sent it off to Derek and I go, what's wrong with this guy? And he goes, no, no, no. We, we charged money for it. He's burstive. I'm like, Oh, okay. Silly me.
01:11:09
Speaker
You can monetize it. It's not funny anymore. And that's what the, uh, the previous company was doing. And, uh, we kept that up and people get, um, they love their Oliver machines. Uh, they're very well built. They're there. It could be antiques, but they're great machines. And to the point that they do want to know when it was built and they want a birth certificate. So we, they do a lot of that. We've got some of the newer stuff in a shop in Stole, Massachusetts last week that
01:11:39
Speaker
They had their Oliver bandsaw was 1919. Wow. It's pretty cool to see.
01:11:48
Speaker
I think that machine had at least a 24 inch throat on it. It was a good size machine. Yeah. Did it have any kind of ornamental iron work on it? I know a lot. That one actually did happen. I don't remember the episode when we were doing the furniture history. We came across some photos of machines and things like that. Just like the workmanship that went into like just
01:12:19
Speaker
Yeah, we've collected some machines, but they're just sitting out in the warehouse getting rusty right now. I always said I was going to set up a little museum and maybe someday I will, but we have a lot of the old literature and stuff, not just for Oliver, but we have some other ones.
01:12:34
Speaker
And then we have a wall in our conference room that we started taking old name plates off of. And some of them, we'd let them kind of like antique people do. We just let them rusty if they are. And we just bolt them to the wall. And people like to see that. It's kind of cool. Old Marine Johnson labels. Yeah. It's funny you said the thing with the eagle because on the joiner, doesn't it have like an eagle on the, is in the
01:12:59
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. That's like their, uh, there was a part of their logo. Yeah. Yeah. The new Oliver. Yeah. Yeah. Well that's a, I had the joiners like, uh, probably like a, one of the first runs of the new. Okay.
01:13:14
Speaker
And there's a difference between that and the shaper, which is like a new couple of years old. Okay. Tell it's sort of like, um, you know, uh, in import machine, the shape where, you know, it looks like all the others, just this one's blue. Yeah.
01:13:31
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Like, you know, you look at the Laguna next to the Oliver, it's like, okay, they paint that one black. Sometimes it's that way. The factory over there makes them all and it's just that one's white and that one's blue. Yeah. I mean, if you look at the Grizzly catalog, it's like, you know, they have,
01:13:47
Speaker
Grizzly, Chop Fox, Bailey, South Bend. It's like, OK, it's these are all the same machines. They just painted one green, one white, one blue and one. I don't know what South. I guess South Bend's blue, too, I think. Yeah, they're like blue and white or cream, you know. But, you know, there's only infrastructure to make these things so many places. That's right.
01:14:10
Speaker
Then a guy over here gets the idea that I can do a better job at importing them and selling them. So he changes the name and goes to the same factory. Right. Yeah. So a lot of that happens. Dave Chappelle had a funny skit about like when, uh, you know, politicians are like, we're going to bring these jobs back to America. And he's like, what? So iPhones can cost $9,000. We want to wear Nike's. We don't want to make them.
01:14:42
Speaker
Some of these machines, I can't imagine what it would cost to make them over here. It was unfortunate. Yeah. You can only take it to a certain extent with.
American Manufacturing Discussion
01:14:51
Speaker
Yes. Yes. That makes sense. Yeah. And the smaller stuff. I mean, we still have a very good American manufacturers, CNC routers, CRR, Andre, Marine Johnson makes their gang saws and, um, double end tenoners, dove tailors, things like that. So there, there are still some.
01:15:08
Speaker
Yeah. It seems like the more industrial you get, the more options there are for stuff that's made domestic. Correct. That is correct. I guess a lot of the ones that are manufactured, it's assembled in America. Yeah. There are some of that. Like Oneida, the dust collectors. Are they done that way? I didn't know.
01:15:30
Speaker
I don't know how much is done in America. They tout themselves as, I mean, we have one, they tout themselves as made in America. They use American motors and I guess, uh, they're probably going to lease it on it. Yeah. Probably welding and stuff like that here. So, I mean, that's like our laser, you know, it's, um, all the parts are maybe not all, but the majority of the parts are imported and then they put it together in Florida. Okay. Yeah.
01:15:58
Speaker
You know, it's good. We like to support, you know, jobs whenever we can. Yeah. We work with a lot of American, a lot of our companies are American companies. Taylor Clamp Carriers up in New York. They're made, they're made in New York. Um, like I said, Marine Johnson and Sierra, Andrew, they have PMK. We work with, um, I'm sure I'm missing some people to get upset with me, but, um,
01:16:22
Speaker
We were with the big boys. We've been with the SCMs. We were with styles. We just don't play well with those kinds of companies, I guess. We're very independent. Our used equipment gets in the way for a lot of those guys.
01:16:38
Speaker
I saw a funny comment about Styles on Instagram about a week ago. They said, yeah, when you call, they ask for your credit card number before they even say hello. They're not the only ones, unfortunately. But we do get along with them still very well. They do support us. And so I don't really have a bad thing to say about Styles, but they
01:17:01
Speaker
They're, you know, they're like a lot of these other companies. The parts are very expensive, but so are cars. If you, if you wanted to build your car part by part, you'd pay a lot of money for it. Yeah. Yeah. And you know, they, I mean, they make nice machines and you have to, there's a level of, um, I don't know, you know, you have to maintain the exclusivity of, you know, the product you have. You're a top tier product. You can't,
01:17:30
Speaker
I mean, it would be nice if you could, but you can't sell the parts for nothing. That's right. It's like when you drive a Mercedes, the parts are just naturally more money.
01:17:38
Speaker
Well, I think I, to be honest with you, I think quite honestly, it gets so competitive on the sale of the new machine that a lot of times they're not making much money on that sale of the new machine. Yeah. It's the back end where it's like sport bikes, like used to ride like Ducati's and, you know, when try and first came out that we would get the bikes cheap, you know, they'll deal or give them to us for whatever, you know, below stick or bust. Yeah, because just service on a bike like that is insane. And then you go through tires, like,
01:18:08
Speaker
You know, nobody's business. You're not going to keep it stock. You're like, wow, this new exhaust would sound bad. Especially California. First thing you do is pull off the California admissions and you got to do a reach out to the car race and you need a new exhaust and you're going to go carbon fiber.
01:18:26
Speaker
That's what we need to do. We need to start up a line of just customization products for our saws. Hey, you got to get this carbon fiber guard. That's like, you know, we started looking at the, we were talking about the Waldendorf saws a while back and then it's like, you started looking at all the options like, wow, you know, I'm already spending this much, might as well add the vacuum pods on the thing and you know,
01:18:48
Speaker
30 is for us. 30 is the same as 40 or the same as 50. You know what I mean? It's not like we got it laying around in the corner of the shop. Buy once, cry once. Yeah. That's about a motto, isn't it? It's gotten us in trouble before.
Customization Projects and Factory Visits
01:19:10
Speaker
Good times. What are some of the other big projects we have going into the shop right now? These guys.
01:19:17
Speaker
Well, they just finished up that make-horse sander. There's a company called York Casket that obviously they make caskets. York, Pennsylvania. In York, Pennsylvania. Yeah. And we've been doing quite a bit of work with them and they had this old, I believe it was a Delevitova sander.
01:19:32
Speaker
But they had this old sander and it wasn't working and they wanted it different. They wanted it designed differently. So we brought it in and we stripped it and we remade the working units, the sanding heads, and then we put it back together and it's got a computer touchscreen control to position everything. And we wrote all that program. We have a guy named Kyle that does that for us. Wow. So to give you an idea how long this sander is.
01:20:01
Speaker
Yeah. That's probably what 30 feet, maybe. Yeah.
01:20:06
Speaker
Yes. So what does it do in those 30 feet? Well, it sends the, the, the molding profiles. So it, it's got one head that'll cut, that'll sand this part and one of those sudden that part one to see on that edge. So when it feeds through all the parts are hit and it comes out, it's done. Wow. That's sweet. I was going to ask you, um, in New Holland, Pennsylvania, there's a big company that specializes in liturgical work.
01:20:32
Speaker
the church furniture. Yeah. Yeah. New Holland church furniture. We sat down. Yeah. That's what they're called. Yeah. We just, uh, I don't know if their router is delivered or not, but we sold them a new, uh, Sierra hundred CNC router that we did the runoff last month. So the machine will be delivered shortly.
01:20:48
Speaker
Yeah, I went out there once when St. Mary's in Middletown, when they rebuilt, when they built up the new church, that's where they got a lot of the furnishings. And I was really close with the Monsignor Walsh. He's no longer there, but he took me out there because I was building stuff for the church and you know, so I had to take a field trip out there.
01:21:17
Speaker
just seeing the size of this place. Oh yeah. Just was like, Oh my God. You should see the size of their new CNC. Just the systems of like where the finishing things and then like stuff just hanging and just going around like a, like a, like the old dry cleaner kind of place, you know,
01:21:38
Speaker
I didn't even know what to think because I couldn't comprehend that scale of, you know, we get into some really big factories. Yeah. I mean, we have a guy in central Pennsylvania Appalachian wood products and makes kitchen cabinet doors. I think right now he's probably making 8,000 doors a day. I was going to ask, have you guys ever worked with Meridian?
01:21:58
Speaker
Yeah, I was just at Meridian. We just placed our first door order ever. Yeah. Well, we'd bought some stuff from Walscraft. Just like, yeah, that was just for somebody. Yes. That was to replace something. It was like a favor kind of thing. They were having an issue, are still having an issue with their gang rip. So that we sold them like 13 years ago.
01:22:19
Speaker
And we didn't know about it. So they called me in to talk about replacing it.
Integrity in Business Practices
01:22:25
Speaker
And I think I was sitting, it was me and my salesman. And I think we had five of their guys and they told me what was wrong. And I said, you don't need a new ripsaw. You need our guys to come in and fix the one you've got. So I'm hoping we can get that done for them pretty soon.
01:22:40
Speaker
Um, I told the big bosses, I'd be happy to take your money if you really want a new ripsaw, but you don't, you don't need one. Then you can take theirs old one back, fix it up a little bit. But like we said earlier, we're in it for the long, long term. So we'd rather not do that kind of business. I mean, just if you're the boss there and you hear that.
01:23:03
Speaker
the next time you need a tool or a machine, where do you think he's going? You'd have to be crazy. I mean, I would hope so. It wasn't really what was on my mind. It was just, it's just, yeah. Well, you're right. It might not be, it's just, it's just, it's who you are as a person and following that who you are as a business. Right.
01:23:26
Speaker
And, you know, that's the way we like to think of ourselves as well. This is, this is how we get our next client. We, we're doing this, that door job because we showed up on the job at another place and met somebody on the job. And he was just liked the way we did things, liked our personality, liked our work, the way we went about our business, you know,
01:23:51
Speaker
whether that's, you know, laying down, you know, protection or whatever, you know, you can just tell how somebody works. Right. Well, and I definitely think with today's society of everything being online, people are warned of
01:24:06
Speaker
not being able to talk to people or people showing up. And, you know, that's why we believe in the face to face and meeting. And, you know, a lot of a lot of companies don't have pulled back. They're on the road salespeople. And, you know, they think you can do it all from there. But, you know, to be honest, the majority of my stops within a week, I'm getting in the shops and talking to people, you know, because they're just like, hey, I haven't seen, you know, nobody comes around anymore. And, you know, it's, you know, it's good to reception of having that, you know,
01:24:36
Speaker
That's a little old school, but I just, I'm working on a project up in New York that, uh, the guy's putting in a new gang rip and a cross cut optimizing
Face-to-Face Interactions in Business
01:24:45
Speaker
scanner. The whole works it's all used equipment. And I went up there three times with the drawings and he kept like, do you really need to come back up here? And, but it's much easier for me to put the drawing in front of him and take my finger and lines here and there and stuff. So, and he gave us the orders. So that, that's what pays off. Yeah.
01:25:04
Speaker
I mean, two of our, you know, strongest relationships were fostered from like that sort of face to face. Like when Rich came from Hayfla, you know, we, we struck it. We, we had a Hayfla account. We, I don't think we had ever ordered anything. Um, and now we basically, we order everything from Hayfla and same thing with you. You know, you came here and met us and you know, it's, it, it,
01:25:30
Speaker
It makes a big difference, you know, being able to meet somebody in person versus we could have bought a different edge band or that one from the school was basically brand new, still had the plastic on it, maybe half the cost, but no training, right? No, nothing, you know? Well, it's funny too, because I get a lot, oh, you guys are in Pennsylvania. Well, we're pretty close, but you have to understand I'm here every week, you know, and
01:25:59
Speaker
being at, at your disposal. And I think we've kind of showed that and we're fans. I mean, you know, that's, yeah, I just get into, you know, if you need me, you know, that's just sometimes people are like, wow, I don't know if I want to bug them or whatever, but that's not what we're about. We want you to call absolutely ask questions and you know, be it as
01:26:21
Speaker
silly that somebody might think the question is, most times it's a pretty good, you know. You don't know the answer. No question is silly. Exactly. Yeah. It resonates with us too, because it's like we're the same way. You know, like if I, I shot you that picture in the text about clean out the glue pot, you know? Yeah. Like we get, I want clients to text us stuff like that. Like, Oh, Hey, what do you think about this? Or, or, you know, whatever. Um, don't clean with this. Yeah. Yeah.
01:26:55
Speaker
Nobody ever owns up to it either. Something weird is going on with the countertop. It's like a little bit rough. I'm like, what have you been cleaning it with? We have a sign outside that's been out there for six months. It wasn't as rough as the countertop. We've done some torture testing. So we know like something's not right.
01:27:19
Speaker
Yeah. You know, firsthand of what, what you do it, you know, you smile and that's how that's, and that's part of being a good steward of your business and, you know, fostering relationships and right.
Shop Reorganization and Recycling
01:27:38
Speaker
All that stuff. Some people might not always appreciate it or have it there, but
01:27:43
Speaker
I think once you really have to fall on it, you understand the importance and the value of it. Yeah. It all comes around in the end. Yeah. Right. Yeah. We've been, uh, we've been cranking stuff out in the shop. That's for sure. It's,
01:27:58
Speaker
Yeah. It's been a lot of people are slowing down. It seems like, but we've been rather busy. Yeah. We don't look at an elevator panel the same anymore. That's like one of those things we were talking about. Like how you see it now. It's like, Oh, look at all these elevator. I know that guy that used to make this, but, uh, yeah, it's pretty crazy on the, yeah, we moved, we just did a lot of moving around within the last year at the shop. So.
01:28:29
Speaker
Yeah. Stop used to be at the back end of the building and I had the guys draw. We do all these drawings, you know, we draw plants and lines and it might, you guys draw my building because I don't have one. So they drove through the building and I started looking at it. I don't know. Just clicked on me. We're bringing everything in this door and we're taking everything out the same door, but I wouldn't tell you to do that.
01:28:55
Speaker
So we sat down, we had several meetings and we decided we were going to change it. So we moved the shop from the back to the front, everything comes in the back door and it goes out the front door. Not quite there yet, but that's the, that's where we're headed. So that was quite an undertaking, moving everything.
01:29:11
Speaker
anything in 80,000 square feet. And we, they put in a machine shop. The one area we had was a used parts room and we got rid of that because we just weren't making any money at it. So we, um, turned out in a machine shop for them. And we had a pit where you back into unload trucks and we never hardly used it. So we filled that in. That was quite an adventure. Uh, that's all concrete now. And so we actually made more room there.
01:29:36
Speaker
So yeah, we still have some more work to do, but I kind of put the brakes on it. It's been enough money. Yeah, it never ends. What'd you do with all the old parts? Most of them went to the scrap guy. The boys went through and they figured out what they wanted to keep, electronics and stuff.
01:29:53
Speaker
The company that takes all the old electronic stuff and they give you so much a pound or whatever. So we took that stuff off. So it'll be recycled. Um, and then a lot of stuff just went to the scrap guy. Yeah. It made me think, cause, uh, yesterday I went through a bunch of stuff. We were moving this old shelving unit to make some space and upstairs in our little cubby hole attic, went through some things and it was just sort of like,
01:30:21
Speaker
finding things you didn't know you had and then finding a lot of junk that's like, this is just junk.
Education and Training Concerns
01:30:29
Speaker
You got to throw this away. You always think that there'll be somebody someday that's going to want it. Yeah. But we just didn't find that was working out too well for us. No, we can't store everything. Right. And we just felt like we could make more, a better use of that space for machine jobs. So we just scrap the projects. Yeah.
01:30:49
Speaker
quite a array of machines now in the machine shop. And yeah, what are you guys all metalworking machines? Yeah, that's metalworking. Yep. So we have a couple CNCs in there. Oh really? Oh yeah. The, uh, the, uh, rubber machine for the, the Oliver band soles and gear machines and smaller lays, uh, CNC lays. So it's, yeah, it's, it's quite the thorough.
01:31:16
Speaker
Yeah. And everything that we're doing, you know, it lends itself that we're. You have to make a part. You need all the stuff to make it. Right. Yeah. And then we have, you know, our fabrication side where we're making all different things from the fab side. So between guarding, we have plasma cutter, a couple of paint boosts, you know, now areas just for we can handle the biggest piece of equipment. I mean,
01:31:40
Speaker
I had metal shop in high school. Oh, nice. Yeah. And we had a lathe. I remember that made a screwdriver and all kinds of that was my, uh,
01:31:52
Speaker
shops. I took all, cause I was always embedded in the wood industry. So yeah, at a young age. So I was like, yeah, I'm going to remember cause you know, you're the lady turning that little dial and squirting a little bit of oil on there. I'm always amazed at how they let us kind of run free in those shops. Well, that goes back to the safety questions we
01:32:17
Speaker
Like we were welding, aren't welding and oxyacetylene welding and you know, and the teacher was like your football coach. You know what I mean? Like he was reading the paper while you were out there with all these tools and like, you know, your buddy would do some welding in his little cubicle and then he'd go off to like do something like you'd heat up his thing before he comes back.
01:32:50
Speaker
It's funny. One time we were coming into metal shop, you know, we always came into like the, the shop and we'd go about, or, you know, what we were going to do. And shop teacher, Mr. Schiffer goes, yeah, everybody in the office today. And he's, he's got a shop. He always wore a shop coat and stuff. One sleeve missing.
01:33:07
Speaker
So you guys, we're going to talk about shop safety today on the lathes. He actually had, he got lucky that he pulled back and it ripped the whole sleeve off. You know, of course, all the shop guys were having a, you know, a ball with it back then. And that's, that's the first time. And, uh, guys having stuff fly off the lays and all kinds of stuff. I mean, it's crazy, right? Like nobody ever got hurt, really. Yeah. Yeah. We got lucky.
01:33:33
Speaker
You're right. I mean, like mixing gas, like, you know, nobody was around checking to see if you had the gas and oxygen levels, right? You just did it. They told you what it was supposed to be. You know, you checked out your striker and the tool thing. He learned to jump out of the way. He learned how to take a punch pretty good. Can't get away with a lot of stuff these days.
01:34:02
Speaker
Yeah. Well, I think it's just the lack of training coming through, you know, unless somebody's coming from a, you know, industrial school program, right? They got rid of it and all the, all the homeschool type of stuff. And they don't know. I didn't have a woodshop or anything. Woodshop was already gone. Yeah. Yeah. I think, uh, my second or last class following me in school, they finally nixed
01:34:31
Speaker
I mean, I had, I was lucky because I just went to like a regular school, public school, and I did metal shop where I could weld, I could, you know, turn the forging and things like that. We did like a lost wax casting. Yeah. Yeah. We had the same, our school was the same way, but then they were trying to gear everybody going to, you know, they'd have like maybe
01:35:00
Speaker
five schools, you know, that were more academic focused. And then they were trying to push, you know, the vocational stuff all to one school. And, you know, those four or five schools feeding that vocational side. Yeah. What a shame. I mean, really, what a shame. Well, they have to, you know, the school has to hit these test scores in order to qualify for that. You know, so then they say, wow, machine shops really not helping us on these, you know, state test scores. So might as well just get rid of it.
01:35:29
Speaker
Yeah, that's, I mean, what a mistake in my opinion. I agree. Yeah. And not even for career oriented reasons, but just for the, the, you know, there's, there's so much to be learned in these, you know, yeah. And it helps you know, especially just think about how many kids are going into engineering, but they're really not going to be
01:35:52
Speaker
full hands-on, but really understanding the process of what goes into it. That makes that much better of an engineer. Yeah. Christopher had these two brothers that worked for me for like 10 years from the time they were like in seventh grade. And, you know, when they eventually went to college, they stopped. But the younger one became a mechanical engineer and he was in these like hands-on shop environments and he was like,
01:36:20
Speaker
They were like trying to cut stuff like with a hacksaw and the blades in backwards. You know, I just like silly things. Like, nobody knew anything except him. He was the only kid that knew any practical, you know, knowledge. Yeah. It's definitely a changing environment. It has been. Yeah. So all in all, it's what else do we have going on? It's a pretty big project.
01:36:50
Speaker
Oh, we just finished up that. Uh, what was that? That's a 382. That's a high-speed rough lumber planer. And it goes 300 feet a minute, 30 inches wide. We were just talking about that. Yeah.
01:37:06
Speaker
Yeah, I think this would be cool. Let's do like a hypothetical. So like, you know, we've been planning all this pine and we have that little 15 inch powermatic, which I think is 18 is on the high speed. I think it goes 16 and 30. No, it's definitely not there. No, no, it must be 16 and 18 or 18 and 20 or something like that. Feet per minute. And per what is the.
01:37:33
Speaker
I don't know what the mash. Usually that's the other thing. It's how much you can actually take off for that. Yeah, it's only three horsepower. So it's got to be like a six, you know, sixteenth is probably the most that we would take. Yeah. If we let's say we wanted to get a new planer, newer used, replace that planer and you guys know what we do. What would you recommend? Like if we want something that's fast, like that's the main thing is it's too slow. You know, we're standing there 300 board feet. It's like half a day.
01:38:03
Speaker
He's on one end and I'm on the other end. You know, we're just sort of like looking at a watches. It's just too fast for one guy, but way too slow for two guys. Most people in a smaller cabinet shop would have like a 24 inch. We sell the Oliver like your import one with the insert cutters.
Planing Processes for Rough Lumber
01:38:23
Speaker
You don't have to worry about grinding out. Is your straight knife or it's no, it's in here. Yeah. And, um,
01:38:28
Speaker
You know, I don't know the speeds on those off top of my head. I'd have to look it up. It'll be faster than that. But at some point speed doesn't really, you can't go too much faster depending on the finish you want to get. If you want to get a furniture grade finish, you're probably not going to go much more than 30 feet per minute, but it'll do that.
01:38:48
Speaker
Well, we're, yeah, we're buying everything rough. So it's like, you know, that eight quarter stock came in like about two and an eighth. A lot of it was maybe even heavier. So like we're getting to the planer at over two inches. I got to come down to inch and three quarter. So with that, with that planer, I mean, it's, it's a long process. Yeah. Well, the other thing you could do with that as well as you could add a second unit and put them end to end, you know, two of your working together, just put a set of rollers, you know,
01:39:18
Speaker
in between and then send it back. Yep. Yeah. If you put them in or side by side and one of the guys just, yeah, if you have the floor space to do that and you could do that, that's one way to handle it without who would speed the process and you wouldn't be into a huge investment, but at least you're doubling it up with the two of you working anyway, you know, what's, what's the, uh, what's the cut on that 382 run?
01:39:45
Speaker
How much will it take off? Yeah. Uh, probably. No, I'd say probably an eighth inch each side or something like that. If you wanted to. 300 feet. Yeah. 300 feet a minute. That's like shooting out. That's like an arrow coming out. Maybe not quite that fast, but it's pretty fast. Five feet a second though.
01:40:13
Speaker
Yeah, I think that would equate to that. Yeah. That's fast. It's all fed automatically. You have material handling coming to the conveyor. The guy just flips it on the conveyor and it takes off. Wow. And what's the process for keeping the board like flat and removing twists and cups and things like that inside that machine? There is none. It's just two things and it just goes shooting through. Right. Two heads.
01:40:40
Speaker
So if you set the, if you set it to, to have your finish at 13 16th or 13 16th, uh, 15 16th, whatever, it's just gonna cut it to that. If it's got this wave to it, it's going to have that coming out.
01:40:56
Speaker
It might take a little bit of it off, but the only way you can really straighten a board is to have the whole board on the table and then go like a jointer. And the Stratoplaners do that too. That was the design of the original Stratoplane, the Oliver that we talked about, because in the old furniture companies, they cut the boards to length first.
01:41:13
Speaker
And then put them through. So you have 24 inch long piece. You could get the whole thing on the table before it went through the cutter head and you could straighten it. That, hence the name straight up plane, but the Newman's, they never, they never looked to straighten the board. They just wanted to get them to dimension and surface as fast as they could.
01:41:31
Speaker
That's like the main reason that we don't buy things surface is because you know even though she which you guys service their stuff. No they're gonna send it through that thing and it's it's whatever it went and it's coming out you know pretty much the same so they use all of hers but again they're running at long lengths right yeah really not much opportunity straightening.
01:41:53
Speaker
Yeah. Um, that was one of my first lessons when I started out. Cause I, when I started, I was really, really green. Like I didn't know anything. I didn't even know what I didn't know. Um, and I was, so I bought, uh, you know, S4S lumber figure and yeah, why not? But then when it came to assembly and things like that, then you start.
01:42:17
Speaker
seeing the discrepancies and the flatness and things like that. And every job you do, you get your lumps. And you go, oh, I got to do this instead of that. I did everything the hard way at first. Because you learned it. Yeah, I didn't know what I was doing. So I started jointing and planning really early on.
01:42:45
Speaker
And people say, why are you doing that? Like, I have no other choice. I mean, straight. How could you not do it? This was my thought. Well, a lot of the big shops, they'll run it through the rough planer, rip it to width and length, chop it to length, and then might go through a molder. And then that takes care of the straightening process at that point.
01:43:08
Speaker
They run it hit, they call it hit and miss planed. They're just getting it down. They're going to miss the thin spot. Then you chop that out or, you know, yeah.
Small Shop vs. Large Manufacturer Efficiency
01:43:21
Speaker
Well, typically the missed parts are going to still clean up in the molder. Yeah. Our process is you, you know, usually we get the rough lumber and we'll spread it out and select
01:43:33
Speaker
What parts, you know, what parts are going for what part, mark it out, chop it rough, you know, with the miter saw, join it, plain it, sticker it, and then, you know, repeat as necessary.
01:43:50
Speaker
And the bigger guys don't have the luxury of being able to do that. So they, they sacrifice, but they, they sacrifice some yield in order to get production. Oh yeah. And you know what we do, every job is different. You know, if you're, if you're Meridian and you're making cabinet doors, okay, we need
01:44:12
Speaker
10,000 linear feet of two and a quarter inch wide maple. We're not doing that. So everything is so specific that it makes more sense to do it this way. You're doing it the right way for what you're doing, for sure.
01:44:32
Speaker
I'm still amazed at like what machines can do and not even like the million dollar machine that I don't even comprehend. Just like things that are like next level of machines we have in the shop, you know, like, holy cow. I mean, something does that.
01:44:50
Speaker
When we got that drill press, the Nova Voyager, you know, well, digital control. I mean, like, man, this is like such a different experience versus the drill press that we had before. Tells you like what, you know, you tell what bit, what material, it tells you the speed. I mean, it doesn't even tell you the speed. It sets the speed. Yeah. It'll go from like 50 to 5000 RPMs just with the turn of a dial. That's pretty cool.
01:45:21
Speaker
Yeah. The technology and just bring coming into the smaller tooling, you know, it's just like the helical cutter heads, inserts. I mean, that was just like game changer. Oh yeah. Oh, it's huge. Yeah. Now router bits, insert router bits just for a regular half inch or even quarter inch, you know, router. Yeah.
01:45:39
Speaker
When we got one, we had that old Yorkville planer. My first planer was Yorkraft. That's what it was. 20 inch. And we put the helical head on it. It was like, why didn't I do this sooner?
01:46:02
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, just that long. Yeah. I never got rid of that thing. Yeah. Yeah. Back in the day, it was the only, the big machines had that in the beginning and you could stand beside one of these Newman planers going through, you know, fit a minute and talk to talk like we're talking now. But before that, when they had the straight knives, forget about it. Oh God. Just drive you out of the building. And the one thing I noticed, like I couldn't play maple with the straight knives.
01:46:28
Speaker
without clogging up my ducks because it would make these strange huge ribbons and it would clog the six inch duck work and so I had like cut a hole up in
Dust Collection and Environmental Considerations
01:46:41
Speaker
it. I had this hole cut up where I could get like a stick of this.
01:46:48
Speaker
Did it suck in there? Yeah. That's what, you know, I would hit this log jam and once a couple of little things accumulate, it was, it was over. Yeah. And everything's backed up. Yeah. Here's another hypothetical. I don't know how hypothetical it is, but, uh, dust collection. So, you know, wrestling with, we're running three dust collectors because, you know, when we moved in, we had the Oneida really four.
01:47:14
Speaker
Oh, yeah, we do have four. We picked up the grizzly for the edge banner because we need some with a high CFM rating. We have the little delta on the planer and joiner. And that's really the big, the big issue is that because it fills up, fills up so fast. We must have emptied it, what, six, eight times yesterday. And it's paying to empty those bag filters. I mean, they're just... Yeah, you need to really go to a bin dump style unit. Yeah.
01:47:41
Speaker
So the one thing that we're contending with here is height. So looking at like some of these bigger central units, you know, we only have like 11 and change at the corner, you know, corners of the building. We haven't really been able to find something that seemed like it would service the entire shop, but still fit within, you know, call it 11 feet of height.
01:48:05
Speaker
Yeah, we'd have to look into that if there's any shorter ones. Right. I know the old Murphy Rogers used to make what they called a shorty, but they're gone. The thing I noticed in the small amount of time I spent looking is it limits the barrel size at the bottom. That's how they sort of bring the height down. So you got this big, powerful machine with a third gallon.
01:48:36
Speaker
little 30 gallon cans at the bottom. Yeah. There's going to be a problem. That's where, uh, that's where they traded off. Yeah. Yeah. We'd have to look at that a little deeper to see what
01:48:52
Speaker
what you can do. Obviously when you climb into something like that and they cost us. Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you were, so I don't know, seven and a half. Yeah. Yeah. It looked like it fit, you know, the requirements. It was like 4,000 CFM. Um, and it had the way to, had three different ways to set it up, but where they sacrifice space was at the bottom and you know, they just brought it down closer to the ground.
01:49:22
Speaker
Well, you need a certain amount of air flow for the CFM and that's where, yeah. A cycle has to be a certain height. Yeah. And then the motor's up on top. Yeah. And something like that, you'd really be going through more of like a, well, a crossflow unit, like the dust tech type. Yeah. Cause I think we can put, I think we can put bins on the dust deck. How do you get rid of your dust?
01:49:45
Speaker
Put it in the dumpster. How you doing? Yeah. We used to just dump it back in the, in the trees. We used to put it in the yard. We don't have the luxury anymore. Cause he, uh, the other way is bags. And if you could, if you could somehow sell it or give it away to farmers or something like that, but it's a lot of times it's mixed. Like, you know, this doing these doors, we had some really, really nice pine shavings. Like if you had a guinea pig or something like that, we had,
01:50:12
Speaker
hundreds, hundred gallons of that stuff. Right. I mean, yeah, we're like eight or 10, you know, 30, 30 gallon bags. Yeah. It was really nice and clean and fluffy and unadulterated. But a lot of times it's mixed, you know.
01:50:29
Speaker
Yeah, they got particle boards and things. Well, yeah, like if it's running, you know, if we had a central dust collection, you got, you know, the dust coming off of the panel material and the edge bander. And so, yeah, it would have would be at that point. You can't you can't go to the farmers.
01:50:49
Speaker
And yeah, I think walnut's no good for horses. It's not good for horses. Yeah. And we can't store stuff unless somebody's coming by every day. Gotta go. I mean, yeah, we got firewood that we have to get rid of. We have to put the calls out. It's like, all right, friends, come and get your stuff. You can't come. I'm calling the next guy. Next on the list. Yeah. You know, we try to entice them and go, well, let you go through the quality scrap barrel if you come and take the firewood. Yeah.
01:51:21
Speaker
You got to get a discount, but you got to take this sawdust with you. Yes. That's what we do to our friends. Just drive it down the street, dump it in the bay.
01:51:38
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, you guys would be the prime resource, you know, if we started research and something like that, seriously.
Urban Logistics and Transit Tales
01:51:47
Speaker
Yeah. And we could look at it when you. We did see a dust tech when we, when we bought that a guy was selling a, uh, I think it was a 10 horsepower, three phase dust tech. But it, this is the problem like that we had with trying to find a compressor, trying to find a dust collector.
01:52:04
Speaker
They're not hooked up. Like, I'm going to come by this compress this this dust collector from you and I can't see it run like, you know, if it works. Yeah. He's like, oh, we don't have three phase power. I'm like, well, then where did you get this? Yeah, exactly. That's he picked it up in a sale or something. I thought it was really cheap. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that happens.
01:52:24
Speaker
Mm hmm. Yeah. Like when we saw the ice, show me those E-max compressors. I was like, so if this is legit, that guy still hasn't seen the message. You guys ever heard of the E-max compressors? You guys don't really deal with compressors, right? So they're it, you know, same like a reciprocating compressor like the Quincy. They're made in Ohio.
01:52:46
Speaker
But they're, these ones didn't have that silent air, but they have, they have an intake that goes on the back that it lowers the decibels to like 70 or something, something really quiet, but they're, they're really cool. We were looking at them before we got that. The guy has two of them up for $300 a piece. It's like, you know, it's like a $4,500 compressor. Wow. Yeah. Well, this can't be you. Yeah. He's added into his research or their job. Great. That's,
01:53:16
Speaker
Sometimes when it's too cheap, you're more scared to buy it than the prices. Like that parking spot in New York. We were just in there this morning. This can't be a spot. What's wrong? There's got to be something wrong with this spot. How can it be empty? Yeah, I did that yesterday. We were going over by the Holiday Express. I'm trying to just find, I'm like, wait a minute. I remember when you said that this is empty. Look for a sign. There's got to be something around here. Yeah, that was well, this morning we
01:53:46
Speaker
They just let us in and they opened the garage door and we drove our cars right into the, I don't know where we would have parked if we had to go see them. Yeah, there was nothing around. It was right by the post office too. So you got all on eighth Avenue or seventh Avenue over there. That's 46 in Queens. Oh, you're in Queens road. I think it was called. I thought you were talking about in Manhattan, the domain post office by Madison square garden. I'm sure that area. I can't imagine that station. No, no, we weren't anywhere close to that.
01:54:18
Speaker
Yeah. I just called him up and say, can I park inside? Like I did the last time. And he came down, opened the door. We had to go around the block again.
01:54:26
Speaker
Oh, yeah. Yeah, that worked out really nice. Or we would have still been. Yeah, we might still be looking in the block. Exactly. That's the worst. We went to and helped out Ed over at Hayfla. They had, you know, they started carrying these century wood products now, which they make like your trash pullouts and stuff like that. And they needed somebody to to install them. So he was like, yeah, well, you know, there's commercial parking out front. I'm like, I don't know about that.
01:54:56
Speaker
So we just took the ferry and yeah, the subway, you know, packed real light. Now, how long does it take you to get there doing that? The fairies about 45 minutes. Okay. It just, it's a straight shot right to New York city. Like if you guys drove to the end of the street, you could see New York city right there. Um, so it's, uh, it's like what three, three streets this way, go down to the water. There's a ferry terminal and there's a couple, um, within like a five mile radius of here.
01:55:25
Speaker
And it just goes straight to wall street. This one 45 minutes. Better than driving. Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. It's, it's a nice ride. There are a lot of people with scooters and bikes that they take up to couple. Yeah. Yeah. A couple. Yeah. I flagged down a guy yesterday. I was like, how many miles are you getting out of this little, you know, just skateboard style scooter, you know, and he's like, I get about 15 miles out of it. So, you know, depending on where you're burning around for the day. And yeah, it's not bad. Of course he was walking it up the hill. So
01:55:55
Speaker
I don't think it'd be driving my big ass around 15 miles. Yeah. Seven maybe in the city. Now, you know, they have the city bikes and I think I don't, do they have scooters in New York? Uh, like that you could just jump on. I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. Yesterday. Yeah. So we saw a couple of people, like we'd get off the ferry and then they went right to the city bikes, got a bike and then they probably bike over to their office or whatever.
01:56:25
Speaker
That's like the hotel only had about 15 parking spots in the bottom there. I guess most people probably get a cabin or whatever. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It was definitely tight.
01:56:38
Speaker
The fairies nice though. It's like, you know, it's 150 feet long, got nice chairs, tables. So you can actually do a little bit of work. Oh yeah. It's smooth ride. Yeah. Yeah. It's not choppy at all really. And it's like a, it's jet propulsion. So it's like a big jet ski and it's a catamaran. So it just cuts through. It's nice.
01:56:58
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. So when our New York customers see the big BK coming through on a scooter, I'll be hauling Ed on the back from Hayfla. Look at you. The funniest thing we saw these two big ass guys freaking running. Yeah. Ed taught us the subway transfer. Yeah. You got to jump on like, you know, the, the IRT to get up to Hayfla's office.
01:57:26
Speaker
OK, it was another 15 minutes or so. Take the three, two or the three. Yeah. To 14th and then the one. The 23rd. Yeah. Yeah, pretty crazy how what it takes to get in there.
01:57:43
Speaker
Yeah. You got to really know what you're doing. Yeah. You don't, you know, you don't want to look too, uh, green. We're looking around like this guy. Yeah. And then you have the others.
01:58:03
Speaker
Fortunately, we don't look like we have much. We did say though, you know, so we were there two weeks ago to help them out, install that stuff. And then the following week we were there for the lighting class and like no crazy people on the subway at all. We had a couple, you know, a couple of subway rides, nothing sketchy at all.
01:58:28
Speaker
We only really saw one down and out homeless person like passed out face down kind of thing. Other than that, it was pretty respectable. It was, you know, a little dirty as far as like the street debris and stuff like that. But I mean, granted, we were in pretty good neighborhoods, too. Yeah. Yeah. But if you get into some of the shadier.
01:58:55
Speaker
Yeah, we're on Wall Street and Flatiron. Yeah, I didn't expect too much sketchiness there. I thought at least on the subway, maybe. Yeah. You know, because people are passing through, but yeah, it was. Never been on that. Oh, you've never been on the subway. Never been on the subway. It's not anything. I mean, like, what's Jimmy DeResta's brother's name again? John. Yeah.
01:59:19
Speaker
But this guy, we know he was a transit cop in New York in the eighties. And when we went up to a maker camp, which you guys probably should check out. Oh, yeah. The eighties were prime time for storytelling. Like if you lived in New York and you rode the subways and did everything. So we were we were just laughing at each other's stories because there was just so much stuff that you, you know, it's like a skit.
01:59:49
Speaker
Like on Saturday Night Live, the ridiculousness and stuff like that. You think somebody made it up, but it was all right. It's like, you know, it's like you get on the subway and it's like, Oh, look, there's a seat. And then you go over there and like, Hmm, no, somebody decided they would have to go to the bathroom. Doesn't look so enticing.
02:00:12
Speaker
No wonder everybody's on this side of the car. This is what would be your daily thing. Yeah, pretty funny because I was saying to Derek, it's like, yeah, some of my areas, it looks a little sketchy going in. I'm typically not, I grew up working in the city and stuff, so I really wasn't, you know, scared of that kind of stuff. And he's like, dad,
02:00:35
Speaker
You're the 250 pound tattooed guy. They're looking at you sideways. Are we going to attack him or are we going to attack him? I said, yeah, good point. When you walk in the subway car, everybody looks down. Yeah. So that's my territory. So coming from here, leaving the ferry.
02:01:05
Speaker
Yeah. What was it? Ed was saying, uh, cause you know, he used to be a salesman and he had parts of the city. I forget where he said it was like a real rough neighborhood and you know, like the school up in the Bronx, it was school would let out and it'd just be like a sea of unruly kids. And he's like, I'm going to have to change like the timing as to when I go to these shops. It was up in the Bronx. Yeah.
02:01:31
Speaker
Yeah, that was, there were some scams like, you know, in traffic, you know, you always had the squeegee guys and everything like that. But they always had these people selling stuff like, this is back when cordless phones for your house was like a novelty thing. So they had them in boxes, but what they do is they get a shrink wrapper.
02:01:58
Speaker
And so, you know, they're out there hawking this stuff and it's basically a box with, you know, scraps of wood or something inside. It's just shrink wraps to look like it's brand new. That was the hustle for the court. That was the hustle. Because nobody could get turned around fast enough to actually... No, you'd be done. You're not going to come back and argue.
02:02:22
Speaker
Yeah, it's coming through the expressway there and you like the when you just come into the city now from a long island and you had the ladies that are standing on the concrete jersey barrier, you know, selling drinks and stuff. And it's like this is pretty sketchy. You just had to come across four pretty crazy lanes of traffic to get over here to begin with. Yeah. So yeah, we have to take the BQE. We don't get to see those. Oh, that's right. Because of the van. Yeah.
02:02:53
Speaker
Yeah, it's...
02:02:56
Speaker
Yeah. It was, I mean, it's again, it's, it seems more innocent than, you know what I mean? Even though there was all this kind of craziness going on, like, um, when you'd use the ATM, they were always open and somebody was always holding the door open because they knew you were getting cash. Oh, here you go. Come on in.
02:03:24
Speaker
I have to remember all these things. I'm going to have to get a cliff notes book. Like I've been on the outskirts edges, a lot of stuff. So, you know, going in and I, you know, a couple of places I've gone in, I was like, I got to rethink this one a little bit. How am I going to get in here? I was like, wait till it's summer and I don't have to worry about walking, you know, a lot of places. And I was just trying to even get a place to pay to park, you know, that you can even attack an area.
02:03:55
Speaker
I know, I know. I was just in one kind of suburbs of like Stowe, Massachusetts, and it was an old factory.
Shared Workshop Spaces
02:04:05
Speaker
And there was literally the one building had like six guys in it, different, all four floors. And actually one of the like floors was split in half with just the makeshift
02:04:15
Speaker
I would want you to see right over, you know, so they had shops on either side, two different guys. And, you know, the next building had three shops in there and four floors. Very convenient. Yeah. And it was funny because the first guy I went into, he's like, Oh, let me show you around. You got to see that such and such over here. And he's on the second floor. And then this guy is on the third floor at the other end of the building.
02:04:36
Speaker
You know, it was pretty crazy. It was neat how everybody was, you know, everybody had their own work. Yeah. You know, and it was just like, and they were actually, this guy goes, yeah, I give him like five bucks and I can go over and use his, you know, I don't have that edge sander. So I go over there and, you know, for Andy. Yeah. So they worked together pretty well. It was, was kind of neat. You know, one guy just did finishing on the one floor and he was finishing for all the other guys. Yeah.
02:05:00
Speaker
So it was like, well, where do you, he goes, Oh, well, Joe over here. And then, uh, Elwood down there, I do all his finishing work. So it, you know, it makes sense. Cause they were networking within this building. Yeah, that would be a good, uh, like a co-op. Yeah. Like if, if you were a finisher and you, you know, you know, that there's all these guys working there, you go, Hey, how about I move in here? It'd be a good place to set up. Yeah.
02:05:25
Speaker
And it really makes sense because most of them were working by themselves or just like another helper. You know, it really wasn't. Everybody was really one, one man band type stuff. That was like that maker space that we, that's where we lost that dust collector. Army, uh, army term, army terminals. Is that what they call it? Yeah. Army yard. Um, yeah, you could rent
02:05:47
Speaker
like a little cubicle or they had what they call it? Studios. Yeah. It's like a room like a little twelve, ten by twelve more than this. Yeah. But they were guys that like they work out of that. You know, they have like some shared machines and you can have your own stuff in your own space. Yeah. Like there's guys like running businesses out of like they had a shop that's like our old shop.
02:06:09
Speaker
OK. Yeah. With, you know, they got a table saw and a bandsaw and a drill press and you have access to. And the one across the street, they had a CNC, a flatbed CNC. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Some lasers like a tormek, you know, like what do you call that? Is that like a, you know, like a metal five axis? Oh, yeah. Like enclosed CNC welding stuff.
02:06:37
Speaker
And you know, you get access to different stuff based on how much you pay. You had the basic model where, you know, you just get the table saw and all this stuff in there. We're going to bring your stuff and take it home. Yeah. I wonder who does the programming on like a five-axis machine. Does a guy have to learn how to do that himself? That's a good question. Yeah.
02:06:59
Speaker
probably comes with the cost of things. Probably somebody that's going to pay a little bit more. Yeah. Cause I think the base number was like 300 a month. Yeah. And that was just just to come in there. Yeah. And just use like the basic woodshop type tools and everything. That's kind of neat. I mean, yeah. Yeah.
02:07:24
Speaker
Yeah, it's funny. I was up to say a couple of weeks ago and I knew this shop was here, but in our system, somebody, it never got put in that this company's on the fourth floor of this building. So like the address is just like.
02:07:39
Speaker
unified, like there's a Mexican restaurant, a store there, trucking, mechanics, and then in nestled in this whole thing, I had to go down this car and a half wide alley. It was a dead end. And like, I just was aimlessly going, there's no signs or anything. I opened this door to the stairwell and it's just like, yeah, there's just birds in here and everything else. Like, there can't be anything in here. I started going up, I started hearing machines running.
02:08:08
Speaker
Well, I get to the second floor. There's a shop there. There's a shop on the third floor and big shops. And then I get all the way to the fourth floor and it's just like, wow, this is, you know, they have elevator access. I think they have like a freight elevator, you know, that went in, but they were just, they had brought a, bought a used, uh, edge banner, pretty good
Challenges of Urban Machinery Movement
02:08:28
Speaker
size unit. And they had to get a crane and everything to bring it up and, you know, open the backside of the,
02:08:33
Speaker
Building up and we saw we had problems. Yeah. Yeah. That's why they move them in those high, high rises in New York city. They'll just knock a hole in the wall, train it in and look it up. How do you get it? Like they had to like swing in, you know, because you can only get so much of. Yeah. Some of this stuff is articulating, but depends. What was, who was telling us that story with the, uh,
02:08:58
Speaker
Downtown they, the CNC router was delivered. Yeah. There was a, uh, I don't remember who the supplier was with somebody told me a story. They sold a CNC router, somebody in New York city and they hired a rigger to move it in. It was a machine showed up to rigor showed up to rigor. Didn't realize it was like on the fifth floor, but he just left.
02:09:17
Speaker
So the machine's there and there's a rig. I don't know if you ever heard of Petowitz. He's a big time rigger from New York city. That might've been who we reached out to about picking up the machines from IRS. Yeah. So he, they called him and he's, he's been around a long time. So he's connected. He called the cops. They shut down the street. He pulls up with his crane, picks it up, puts it in the hole in the wall and he left.
02:09:42
Speaker
I'm sure the bill was pretty big, but yeah, like the emergency locksmith was just a price to go pick up two machines in Pennsylvania for us was like something crazy. It was crazy. Yeah. It was like six times what we paid. Yeah. Yeah. Well, freight and rigging is expensive. Yeah. I bet. Scotty's. I know Scotty Petowitz, the owner and he's not bashful, but he's good. Yeah. That's what you need a lot of times.
02:10:10
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Ours was a pretty simple, you know, they they would have taken it off and put it in here and everything. We had to do all that. But yeah, we just paid some guy with a trailer. Yes. Yeah. There you go. Yeah. Make sure you get an extra bonus when it actually shows up.
02:10:30
Speaker
actually show up. You picked it up? Yeah. Actually, luckily IRS auctions, they referred us to like a, what would you call it? It's like a broker. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So then they got us in touch with somebody else and
02:10:45
Speaker
There's a lot of the, they call them hot shots and they have a pickup truck in the trailer behind them. You know, bring your stuff over. We use those sometimes too. Yeah. Yeah. That worked out nice. But then when we sold the edge bander, the guy just hired some guy with a trailer. So he brings like a.
02:11:02
Speaker
Like a car trailer, I guess, kind of. Yeah. But, you know, landscaping kind of. No. Landscapers have the. Yeah. Those hotshot trailers have, you know, the the flatbed, the wheels are below it. That's right. Right. This the wheels were above it. So it made for a very difficult. We had to have all these all this blocking so we could, you know, set it down with the forklift. So it would be higher than the wheel. Well, some defenders off. Yeah. Wow. It was a mess.
02:11:32
Speaker
Yeah, but that edge band ran like a dream that day. I mean, the sun was shining on us. I mean, we still came out in the red, but.
02:11:47
Speaker
Yeah, but not so, not so
Edge Bander Machines and Opportunities
02:11:51
Speaker
bad. It made it palatable. Yeah. I mean, it was worth, it was worth the 500 bucks. Yeah. Just in scrap metal. Yeah. Probably worth about 350. And they got rid of it. Yeah. Yeah. That a lot of times is half the battle. Yeah. We had to get rid of it too, to make room. Yeah. Couldn't house it.
02:12:13
Speaker
I mean, we did spend about 90 minutes with that guy with the trailer. It was like, must've been his first time ever loading something, striking it down. Yeah. Yeah. To unwrap his new, uh, ratchet straps. That was a signal. Yeah, that is funny. He said they dropped it, unloading it.
02:12:33
Speaker
Yeah. So that was, see, the whole thing went our way because now anything that was wrong with the machine could be blamed. That's true. That was a rigorous fault. It was really meditating. The machine doesn't do very well for it. Yeah.
02:12:55
Speaker
especially something like that with all those moving parts and the delicate electrics and the Maddox. Yeah. I would just call the scrap guy right then. Yeah. Yeah. Just coming here. This thing's over on pine and Hearst. He was like, you think I could use it just to put the edge banding on and then I'll do all the trimming and everything by hand. I'm like, Hey, knock yourself out. That's what you want to do. Like for, you know, for 500 bucks, you can probably get like a little,
02:13:25
Speaker
What was that mix maxiwa maxiwa? Yeah. Even that was more than 500, but still. Yeah. I mean the festival one for, for a couple of grand. I mean, it worked well for us for a long time. Yeah. I mean, we did some jobs, did sizable jobs with that thing. Yeah. It doesn't always come out, you know, perfect. Perfect. The funniest thing is when we were firing up that, that Monday and running and you're looking at the end and it's like,
02:13:52
Speaker
I don't even have to touch it. Yeah, because it's the post-work that's really the... And you can never get it. You can never get it. It's never like that. No, the best case scenario with the... And the festival is a great machine. I mean, it's a nice machine, but it just doesn't come out like the, you know, the edge band.
02:14:15
Speaker
too much user input, you know? Yeah. You're physically feeding this thing in and any little variation in pressure. Yeah. You're trying to like be as consistent as possible. You're all tensed up. You're like, you try over the extension cord. I mean, everything, you're just like, you're holding your breath the whole time. Like you got a good, you got a good run.
02:14:40
Speaker
And if it's a wide piece, you know, you're, you're trying to feed this thing and you're really far from the machine and it's brutal. Well, you made the right choice. Oh yeah. I mean, we've, we've run a decent amount of banding. I mean, like we said, when we bought it, like we go through periods where we'll edge band a lot and then it's going to sit for, for a while. I mean, the only thing I've been edge banding is this stuff for my kitchen. Um, but this pre-finished cherry, I mean, we haven't had to touch anything. Everything that's come off of it.
02:15:09
Speaker
That's where it should be. It's all in the tuning. You know, I get into so many places that they just could have it tuned better, but they're just scared to or not making the adjustments and they're wasting so much tail end time. You know, that's the joy. Not having to do all that. The object is to go from Bandar to assembly. You know, those are the little things that I was just in a shop.
02:15:39
Speaker
one day, end of the day, and problems with an older bander, you know, it was like a 2007 model. And, you know, I ran through a couple of things with them and throwing all kinds of error codes and, you know, all the, I'm looking at all the pads are, you know, worn to the bare minimum. It's barely dragging this thing over the metal, you know, part of the bander and, you know, they're running three millimeter and I'm like,
02:16:04
Speaker
everything that was coming off. I was like, Oh my God. I was like, I can't believe you guys were doing, and they were running a lot of work, but I just spending days going through stuff. And they'd be like building like office furniture. They mostly, mostly medical.
02:16:19
Speaker
So pretty much everything is like three millimeter. Like those are like the only areas where you see that. Like I don't feel like even the two millimeter was sick. Yeah. Yeah. And really today you can get away. Most, most everybody, even the big manufacturers are going to two mill, one or two mill, you know, three mil is, is, you know, you need one heck of a machine to really, if you're going to do any type of production work, you know, cause it's just, it doesn't seem like much, but that,
02:16:49
Speaker
extra banding and just trying to get it straightened out within the machine. Yeah. You know, it just takes really to do it. Well, a whole different animal, you know, that you can feel comfortable with your work. Yeah. We just got some, uh, inch and five days, one millimeter riffs on white Oak. We have like a bunch of inch and a half, um, stuff we need to do for to match this apartment in Hoboken. So that'll be cool to run through there. Oh, absolutely.
02:17:19
Speaker
Yeah. Um, the thing with the edge bander is it kind of having it, even if it's not being used, you know, every single day, it's there to, you know, sort of, um, create this opportunity for us. Exactly. You know what I mean? So we can bid on work and accept work with this machine in our shop. Otherwise you can't go in the other direction. You gotta take the risk.
02:17:47
Speaker
Yes, it is kind of what we did. You know, we bid this that the job that we banded, you know, on the set up day, it's like we we bid that job under the pretense that we were going to buy an edge band. And it worked out. Yeah, it did. With your help. Yeah. Here again, that's what we're here for. That's right.
02:18:14
Speaker
Yeah, but that made the excitement of the job a little bit more, you know? With that compressor. Yeah, that's what was amazing. Yeah, that. 24 gallons. That compressor, I can't say enough about that compressor. Yeah. I love that thing. You know, I mean, I hate it, but I admire it, I'll say.
02:18:35
Speaker
It did more than I thought it would do. Yeah. You know, and that was after we just did those boxes, you know, like 10 days of it running straight. Oh, yeah. With the laser. Yeah. Yeah. We did a thousand boxes in the fall. So it was like double that. It was like three weeks. Just like basically running eight hours a day. Yeah. You don't want to stand by.
02:18:59
Speaker
waiting for something to blow off. But yeah, I mean, and everyone's great. Yeah. Yeah. But that Quincy is, is another animal. And we got that for a song. So it's the Quincy's like half the volume it seems as that machine. Yeah. And you hear it hasn't even come on. Yeah. Well, yeah, that's, you're powered up and have that standby.
Kitchen Cabinet Production Efficiency
02:19:24
Speaker
The volume is what's really key to that.
02:19:28
Speaker
just relying on pressure. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The three with the three quarter line going over there straight to the edge banner. Yeah. Just like you taught us. Yeah. It's been a big projects. You guys got coming up.
02:19:48
Speaker
Uh, so we just ordered all those doors for a kitchen, um, down in brick, which is like a half hour South of here, um, with a designer who we've worked with. Um, I mean, I've known her since like 2015, 2016. You probably, yeah. Was that the first job you worked on her with? Yeah. And that's where Rob and I met actually. Um,
02:20:11
Speaker
So this is our first big job with her, which is good. She, she went out on her own like maybe about a year ago. So it's good. We've been trying to foster this relationship for a while. She finally went out on her own. So she's got a little more freedom now. We're doing that. We're going to have the, all the boxes cut by a guy up in Connecticut on the CNC.
02:20:31
Speaker
So, so trying out something new. Yeah, this is a sort of a not experimental, but it's, it could be, you know, another avenue for us. This is what we're trying to develop. Yeah. I mean, if we can bust out a kitchen,
02:20:48
Speaker
with this format in call it two weeks versus him and I doing it. And it's going to be 12 weeks because we're building all the doors, cutting all the boxes by hand, doing all the boring, everything, building the drawer boxes. You know, it would be nice to be able to do that.
02:21:06
Speaker
Yeah, that's people. There's more people that want this kitchen that we're building than the way we do it in house. Yeah. And there's more money at the end of the right day left for us in this style. Yeah. I mean, there's nothing like doing it the other way, you know, where you're gray matching everything and look at this door and look at this drawer and blah, blah, blah, blah. But
02:21:32
Speaker
Yeah, I got my I have eight doors and four drawer heads in there that I have. I don't even know how many hours I have into them for my kitchen. It's a lot. It's a lot of time. Yeah, it is. I mean, we used to measure in months to do a kitchen.
02:21:51
Speaker
I was, yeah, I mean the price for Meridian for, I don't know how many doors and, and fillers and panels. And yeah, it's 62 or three openings. So it's not even counting the moldings.
02:22:07
Speaker
It does include the panels. It doesn't include any of the moldings or the fillers. So really what you really need, what is the unit that you're looking at to help you cut all those panels?
02:22:27
Speaker
Yeah. And like you said, we, you know, we're just getting into this software. Um, that was perfect for this style of work. It doesn't do everything that fusion does, but for this kind of casework thing. Oh yeah. It works really well for that type of work and renditions and stuff are pretty cool.
02:22:50
Speaker
Yeah. Not, not again, it's not as good as fusion, but it's, it's good enough. And it's, well, it's designed for that happy medium between everything, but really for the production side. Yeah. And that's where you're going to.
02:23:05
Speaker
I mean, you can put your pricing in there for the doors for everything and spit out a number too, you know? Yeah. The more you load the front end of the machine, that's what I'm just learning now with, you know, you, so you put your material costs and everything in there. So now when you're designing that kitchen, you have a good idea. Oh wow. It's, you know, I'm going to have 40 sheets in this, you know, and here's my price of those 40 sheets, you know, and the more you stay on top of that side of it,
02:23:35
Speaker
you know, that's going to make the tail end of your job so much faster and easier because you can get it at a glance. So you know, it's great for estimating. So you go into your cut lists on there, you know, and you basically just do a simulation of what the, what it's going to look like and then what kind of waste and things it's figuring out already. So then you can say, okay, well, you know, that job, that material is a little temperamental. So we're probably going to need about three or four more sheets, you know, just with, with a waste factor that may happen.
02:24:06
Speaker
and then have all your costing already because you can just add those to it and it throws that in there. It's got that great what if selection. Yeah. Like you get to your price and then there's a button that literally has the one here. Oh really? Yeah.
02:24:22
Speaker
What if times four? Yeah. What if, you know, you change a frame and panel to slab MDF? What, you know, so, you know, you change like the pearl opening thing. You see, you've changed a few parameters and it kicks it out. Yeah. That's where you're really going to find that you can
02:24:42
Speaker
you know, give your customer some options. Plus, it's already giving you the, you know, the door. So, yeah, whatever door, if you're subbing out the door, you know, it's already giving you that size to be able to give to that manufacturer. Yeah. Yeah. That's I mean, I'm been trying to go at it pretty heavy. You know, it takes me a little bit longer to pick up computer stuff. Yeah. Well, don't be afraid, like,
02:25:08
Speaker
to get an hour or two with like the trainer that we used to use was Michael and he was out of Canada and his father had a full shop. So he knows it. And then you can, the nice thing with that is they record that whole session and then you can just go back to it. So everything that's being done on your screen with them is saved and you can see exactly how you set the parameter.
02:25:38
Speaker
Yeah, we had like a 90 minute to give you like a 90 minute intro. They set up, you know, help you set up your library and stuff.
Software and CNC Challenges
02:25:45
Speaker
What's the guy's name? David Skinner. Yeah. He's a closet guy. He sounded like he was from Canada. Yeah. Nice guy. I mean, after doing a job now.
02:25:53
Speaker
I'd love to, you know, do that again. You know, it's like every job I'd want to do that kind of thing, you know, because like today I just figured out like the multi print, the multi print. I sent up the multi print to the CNC guys like, oh, it's blank. Like, oh, so I went through it and like, what's going on here? Oh, you got to drag
02:26:17
Speaker
this to, you know, from the little, I see it up here on the left, but how come the main sheets are blank? You didn't know you had to drag them over. Yeah. It's those little things that you learn as you're going. Right. Now, we always liked it. I thought it was a great program, a very versatile one, you know, was relatively easy to learn. Yeah. We're more from the free drawing school. Yeah. That's why we see it as somewhat limited in that regard. But
02:26:45
Speaker
Well, you can go in, you can pick off any part then and do modifications to, you know, so you can, if you got, you know, cabinet three and you want to put, you know, outlet cutouts or something. Oh, yeah. That's very easy to do. But if you're not running to a CNC, it's, you know, really not. Right. Right. Yeah. Getting into the shape editor and, you know, that feature where you could, you know, sort of draw
02:27:12
Speaker
Well, and if you're sending some of those parts and you're sending it to your buddy with the CNC, some of the other stuff too, you could put in there. If you needed templates or something for, you know, say a countertop end or something like that that you were doing, you can add that to your parts list. When you send it to them, that would be your template, you know, coming in for whatever. So, you know, keep that in mind as you're doing it. Cause that's a great way of saying, Hey, I'm already doing all that and I needed these
02:27:37
Speaker
three inch radiuses and this big sweeping arc or what have you. Yeah. Cause it's by the, you know, he charged by the sheet. So yeah, we'll see where there's a little waste will fit. Yeah. Yeah. Why not? And then you get a couple of those panels are big. So like 20 to 24, there's only like one piece on, on each of those. And there's all this waste.
02:27:59
Speaker
because I was checking it out. I want to see like, cause well, it shows you the percentage waste of the, or the percentage not waste. And then you can change that as well. Yeah. Quite a bit, depending on what you're doing. So yeah, I think he has a Rover. I was looking on his website. We have a nice used Rover, low hours and pretty nice machine.
02:28:26
Speaker
It is. It's, it's funny. I think that's a 2019 with only like 420 hours on company that it came from. They just did this one little cutting board thing and they just found that they could buy the part out, you know, for the amount of time they had somebody just, they were running very limited and it's, and it's a well-equipped machine, 12 tool changer, 21 spindle drill blocks. You know, what's something like that go for? I think we have that. We just price drop.
02:28:54
Speaker
65, maybe. Yeah. Wow. That's a lot cheaper than I would expect. Yeah. What do they do at quarter million? No, not that one. That one's probably one 20, maybe one 30. Yeah. That's amazing. Like compared to like like a five by 10 Laguna flatbed, you know, you're talking like 50,000, right? So just for like a little bit more than twice, you get something that's so much more capable, right? Yeah.
02:29:19
Speaker
Yeah, and the nice thing about the way that one's set up, it's a four by eight machine, but it actually has four zones of pins.
Complex Machinery Operations
02:29:29
Speaker
So you can actually operate it all four zones at one time with a zero zero point. So your pop up pins, you could be locating four different style parts. So you can actually run that like a point to point style machine.
02:29:45
Speaker
and position a lot of stuff. So say you were cutting a big job and you only just really wanted to send your slides to it, you could be doing it that way for drilling operations and what have you. And then still, all your other parts are not being cut and wasted. Is that how you locate the sheet? There's pins that come up? Yeah. And the better you are at that 00 point,
02:30:11
Speaker
you know, with your pop-up pins and what have you. And if you're, you know, a lot of guys will use the rest of the table, but you're kind of positioned, you have to like drag on your sheet over and kind of position it. And then you might have some more wasted material where this way you're cutting, you know, with like a Stree Big, you know, and then you can just insert those parts to those whatever location and you could be pendulum. So you could put four parts on that machine and then it just goes and hits those four parts.
02:30:40
Speaker
You know, and you could unload, you know, four zero points. Correct. So when it finishes one and moves to two, you're just putting a new part on one. Exactly. It's going to keep working its way around. Yeah. So, and a lot of machines don't have those features. So you're getting into a pretty industrial style machine with, you know, especially with, with the 12 position tool changers as well, you know, allows you to do more things with hardwood and things like that, that,
02:31:05
Speaker
you know, you might be limited, you know, say you were making some arched stuff and you said, Oh, I want to kind of keep that tooling set up. And, you know, I just have that in there and we can jump into it. You know, if you're figuring out what, if you're doing regular, what kind of air and dust collection does a machine like that call for dust collection on that? What are you thinking on the CFM? It's not a lot, probably 2000, maybe. Hmm.
02:31:33
Speaker
in your air, like you're pretty good now with air. It's not a lot of air on that. Yeah. Yeah. I think we're at 22 CFM. You know, one of the other things that we were talking before about between, you know, sawing stuff or routing stuff, you know, when you go into routing nested base,
02:31:55
Speaker
especially it becomes an issue when you're grain matching. Now you're taking really might as well figure, you know, a half inch swath between those drawers or what have you, where, you know, in the panel salt, you're taking an eighth inch and you're much closer to what the grain should look like matched up.
02:32:15
Speaker
even these doors that I just built, there's only one eighth inch saw blade between. You can still see it sometimes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. If it's like a big cathedral, you know, it really gets offset.
02:32:30
Speaker
So that'll save the space too with the, with the Streeby, you got the base savings and it gives us more room. We can put that CNC in it. I was giving away the CNC. We're building on the shop, you know, I was looking out for it. You got to put it upstairs. You hear that CNC companies? You got to have a contest now.
02:32:51
Speaker
They're plugging away for the next machine. I tell you, you should take a little trip down the long branch and plug that CNC machine down there. He's, he's jumping at the bit for something like that. I mean, man, 65 K for that Rover. That sounds like a deal. It is a deal. It really is. I mean, it's because, you know, when you get into the lesser machines, you're not
02:33:15
Speaker
talking longevity, and then you have more things, your repeatability. That's what a lot of people don't realize. So, you know, if you're talking about a $50,000 machine, a lot of times you're going to have repeatability issues from one corner to the other, height differences. Oh, that's the stuff that's maddening. Well, and that, you know, depending on what you're trying to machine, they can really throw you a lot of curves.
02:33:37
Speaker
I mean, that's why you spend the money because you want repeatability. We want predictability, repeatability. That's what makes our lives easy. I want that here and I want it at home. I'm not getting it at home, so at least I want it here. When I come home, it's all hell breaks loose. My wife wants to know why I wake up at 4.30 in the morning. It's like, well, because nobody else is up.
02:34:04
Speaker
It was probably the last shot we were just at. I was talking to the assessment foreman and he was saying, he goes, yeah, we started six, but you know, I'm up at four. I was like, yeah, I have a big community. He goes, no, you don't understand. I get up at four. I get my shower. Yeah. I make my breakfast. I watch my news for the day. You know, I start looking at, you know, whatever else. And he said, then I just, I have a seven minute commute. He's a kindred spirit. We've got to get linked up with this guy. Yeah. Because like, I got like eight, eight 30, I'm getting ready for bed.
02:34:33
Speaker
You know, depending on my wife and I will be watching something on TV and it's like, no, no, I don't have time for that because I'm going to be I'm going to go to bed at eight. I got my book, you know, I'll read for a half hour. But eight thirty, I want to be, you know, lights out like why you got to go to bed? So why are you waking up so early? Why do you got to do like you can stay up later? No, no, no, no time. Yeah, you don't get it. If I stay up later, it's you and me.
02:35:01
Speaker
But in the morning, that's me. That's all me. Yeah. Four o'clock. That's what I get out of four o'clock every day. Even on the weekend. Yeah. I mean, I hear that rustling upstairs. I'm like, all right, here goes.
02:35:21
Speaker
I love my wife, you know what I mean? So I, you know, but it's just, it's one of those things. Yeah. I can't deal with the wife in the morning. Yeah. My son, you know, he's typically he's still asleep, but if he wakes up, it's like, I can deal with him, but my wife's just, uh,
02:35:39
Speaker
She wakes up and she's like ready to go, you know, immediately, talking a mile a minute. I'm like, this is too much for me. It's like, I got to get out of here. She came home last night, you know, and it's like eight something. She's a hairdresser so she gets home late. And she I'm watching something on YouTube. She's just like, I'm like, this is like you're here right now. I'm here. I'm ready to fall asleep. You know, if I was asleep already, I'd be fine with it.
02:36:10
Speaker
Too funny. Oh man. That's the way it is. Yeah. It's a good show. What's the name going to be of this show? That's, we had the cool one, the hot rods and edge banners. We didn't really, we didn't touch on any of that stuff. No, I don't know. We got a long one. We're at two hours, 36 minutes. Oh man. We're like Rogan territory. People get my money's worth out of this one. People like the long ones.
02:36:34
Speaker
Yeah. I did get the tunnel hall working pretty good though. So I don't know if you saw any of the pictures or you're not on Facebook really. I don't know if that went over to Instagram or not. So yeah, we're, we got the 21 Daytona hooked up and so far I'm at 88 mile an hour. So we're still tuning. So I still can't get away from my adrenaline rush. That's my biggest thing. I've been at adrenaline junkie for all these years and it's like,
02:37:00
Speaker
That's a tough one. Yeah. You ever try kite surfing? Yeah. Cause I'm scared of heights. Yeah. Oh yeah. We got a, we got a great story with Ryan or other salesmen that, uh, what was the name of that peach tree in Atlanta? It's a peach tree towers. It's, uh, I don't know if you ever been to Atlanta. It's the round hotel.
02:37:18
Speaker
I've only been to like kind of by the brave stadium. I went to like a like a trade show kind of thing over there. Yeah, this is right downtown next to the convention near the convention center. We took a customer out for dinner and they have a revolving restaurant at the top, which doesn't work. It doesn't move. Somebody said somebody got hurt on it or so on, but it doesn't go around anymore.
02:37:42
Speaker
But anyway, we had one of our salesmen is scared heights and he didn't tell me that I made the reservation because the restaurants really good. And he got on the elevator and he just stared at the door. And meanwhile, two of our service techs for his son and Kyle, the other tech were
02:38:02
Speaker
Oh, look at that. Look how far up we are. This is great. And he's just, it's one of those outdoor elevators. So, uh, we got off the elevator and he ran right in and I kept, I sat him. So he was facing away from the windows, but that didn't matter. Oh, he was just terrified. What is that?
02:38:24
Speaker
Oh, I don't know. That's got to be what, 50, 60, maybe. Oh, I didn't realize it was way up there. Yeah. I'd be scared too. Me and Ryan would be huddled in the corner. There's a thing with heights. Like I don't like heights either, but there's like a cutoff point where it doesn't get, where it's not scary anymore. Like once you get over a certain height, I feel like, cause then it's like an unreal height where it's, you know, it's context. You're going to pass out in those first four stories. Yeah.
02:38:52
Speaker
Like, I don't want to be on the top of the roof of my house, but I'll go on the top of like, you know, I don't want to be outside, but like, you know, on the top of the Eiffel Tower is fine. Yeah. I did some work. I think it was like 101 Hudson or 100 Hudson or one of those addresses in Jersey City. And the apartment was on the 47th floor and they had the windows that go like, you know, literally to the floor.
02:39:17
Speaker
I was like, I, I would not be comfortable living here. I don't, I don't like this. It takes a certain person for that. Yeah. Cool. It was a good day.
RT Machine's Service Capabilities
02:39:31
Speaker
Yeah. What do you think you guys, you guys want to, uh, having shots, parting bits of wisdom, ball, RT machine.com. That's where your guys, you know? Yeah. I've remind everybody what your service area is.
02:39:47
Speaker
Well, we cover anything in the country as far as our used equipment and out of the country. But as far as our new equipment and being able to reasonably get our service texts here, we're Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, Maryland, Virginia, Ohio, that's kind of our main core region. And we do a lot more new equipment in that area.
02:40:08
Speaker
Our Texas, uh, I mean, Kyle's goes out to Texas. I mean, guys, we send our, uh, our Oliver guy anywhere, California. Yeah. Yeah. So, and we do some service work for some of the manufacturers for Olmec. We do a lot of work for those guys. And so, but anyway, our region is, uh, Northeast is a flat rate for service.
02:40:32
Speaker
Uh, I don't even know what they charge. I mean, it's so much an hour and there's a travel time and there's stuff like that. There's a per diem, but they change it and I don't keep up with it. Yeah. It just depends. Each customer going by your zip code and your ad. Yeah. Yeah. And we look at, you know, the scope of work that we're going to be doing.
02:40:53
Speaker
We try to pre-quote, you know, a guesstimation. Yeah. So you can get an idea if somebody calls you up from Connecticut and says, Hey, yeah, my edge band is acting up. Got the pain in the ass factor.
02:41:08
Speaker
We have one of those. The eighth floor. It's a walk up. You said, yeah, we'll make it, but we're not going to install it. We're going to leave it on the sidewalk. If you're cool with that, we literally tailgate delivery. Yeah. Yeah. Well, yeah. So don't be afraid to reach out, you know, uh, just because these guys are in Pennsylvania doesn't mean that, you know, they can't sell you a machine out in California or anywhere.
02:41:33
Speaker
Absolutely. Yeah. And what's the largest used machinery facility in North America? Is that what it is? That's correct. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. If you can find somebody with more machinery, let me know. I've been in most of these places. We have a guy kind of it's, he doesn't really have any woodworking machinery. We're looking for a, um, compressor. We found his information. He's in like,
02:41:59
Speaker
Is it farming Dale? But he seemed to have a lot of weird industrial stuff. Oh, there's a, there's a guy in Ohio that has a lot of industrial metalworking and, but as far as just concentrating on woodworking, I don't know anybody's got any more stuff. So it's RT machine, RT machine.com. Yeah. All right. Everybody can remember that.
02:42:24
Speaker
Yeah. Well, if not, it'll be put it down there in the description. Anytime you always look up the American craftsman. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. This is your driving pleasure wherever you are. Let's see two hours and 45 minutes. We can make it. We can almost make it to bridge Hampton in the morning. Yeah. Left at four. Yeah. Yeah. The morning ride is about an hour or so. Yeah. Yeah.
02:42:52
Speaker
that evening commute. Oh, very good.
02:42:59
Speaker
Yeah. Well with that, thank you guys for listening. Thanks for coming out guys. Always a pleasure. Yeah. Nice meeting you. And you guys are thinking about maybe doing a podcast, right? Yeah. The guys keep pushing me. They want to do it. Yeah. So, uh, Jill, I think reached out to you. So yeah, we're going to try to figure it out and yeah, I encourage you. Yeah. So when you guys do let us know, we'll, we'll let all the listeners know. Yeah. Guys will have to tune in. You guys can come over to our place. Yeah. Yeah. Do the opposite. Yeah. How far are you from a shady maple?
02:43:31
Speaker
Yeah, it's down south, right? Yeah. We're probably, cause I'm about an hour and a half from my house and that's like another 40 minutes. It's not even in the neighborhood. Yeah, no. Way north of Lancaster, right? We are. Yeah. We're north of Lancaster. North and west.
02:43:53
Speaker
Okay. So we're almost like, you know, Harrisburg is like central PA and we're almost like directly north of Harrisburg. Okay. A little west, but mostly directly. I wonder if we can make, uh, there's the Frank Lloyd Wright, uh, falling water, falling water. And what's the not something knob. Uh, that's way out west, isn't it?
02:44:16
Speaker
I'll tune ish. Okay. So probably a couple hours. That's where I would, I would take PA turnpike to Altoona and then get on like 68 or wherever it was to get out to Morgantown. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's a nice area. A lot around us. Yep. All right. We're going to have to make it out there. Yeah.
02:44:40
Speaker
Why not? We'll wine and dine you. You've been good to us. We'll be tired after walking around 80,000 square feet, that's for sure. Well, thanks everybody. And we'll talk to you soon. Take care. 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. Again, we appreciate your support. Thanks for tuning in.
02:45:26
Speaker
change.