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Dan, Your post brought a couple of things to mind. First off, it's been my experience that technicians at printing shops possess and absolutely incredible ability to misunderstand "the point" of whatever is being printed. Simple stuff like sending a link to download your image file, might result in a massive full color printout of the link file path! I thought I was the only one until I saw an episode of "Parks and Recreation" where they made a joke about exactly that same thing! Cake decorators sometimes do similar stuff where they'll write instructions instead of inscriptions so you end up with "Happy Birthday Leave a space Mararet". A slightly different option would be to look into laser engraving. I used a shop out here many years ago and was surprised by how affordable it was. Maybe you could make a volume deal with someone in that line of work?

One popular trick among a group of smiths I know is to take an old soup can with both the bottom and top cut off. You put paper in the bottom, put dry wood kindling over the paper with a piece or two of lump charcoal on the kindling, then your coal or coke fuel. Light the paper, put the can over your tuyere, and gently give it some air. Once you see your first couple of floating cinders, you can start to give a bit more air, and refill the top of the now-depleted can with more fuel. In my experience, some coke requires sustained high heat to light. Paper and wood won't last long enough to get the coke going. There also seems to be a critical mass for burning coke in a forge. If it burns down to one or two lit pieces, they won't give off enough heat to light neighboring fuel if its all just in a pile. That get's really frustrating because the lit pieces go out if there's too little air, but too much air just blows past the fuel and cools the unlit material. The can technique helps to focus the heat and air to where they do the most good. Another approach that's popular in some shops is to use a gas torch to light their coke fuel in the fire pot. It never worked for me, but I don't have an oxy-acetylene torch so maybe that's why.

Gmbobnick, I repurposed an old "star drill" used for manual rock drilling as anti-rotation punch for riveted joints. The point self-centers in a round hole, and I get six evenly spaced notches.

Building on what Thomas pointed out, it's commonly overlooked that large masses require more energy to move. Simply put, the entire point of a guillotine tool is to help a solo smith working with hand hammers. Heavy top tooling defeats that purpose. There's a really old episode of "The Woodwrights shop" with Roy Underhill where he's visiting the Colonial Gettysburg blacksmith. The smith is shown cutting sheet metal with a really stubby little cold chisel. I thought it was short from a long life of grinding which got me wondering why a master smith with plenty of opportunity to make better tools would keep using something that short. Then it dawned on me that this master smith was getting more done with less work, by using the right tool for the job.

Chloe, I have an old blacksmithing book that shows top tools called Butchers which have working faces that are shaped like a chisel, only instead of a straight cutting edge, they have a concave crescent shape. In use, the curve "hems in" the stock, cutting from the outer edges towards the center. This makes it a bit easier to cut stock that would otherwise jump away from the chisel. It also helps to minimize deformation of the stock at the cut line. That may help to track a cut around the circumference of your stock since the tool will self-register in the earlier cut. Finally, this tool could be used at the edge of the anvil for a final shearing blow. You might get a similar effect with a chisel grind on your top tool instead of having bevels on both sides. The flat back of a chisel grind will want to create a smooth plane. In fact, I suspect a chisel ground top tool would be handy for cleaning up that nub.

JHCC, I'm not sure about NYC, but there was a code revision about fifteen years back that allowed "Stumpys" which are sometimes called "Five over ones". They're commonly a type of mixed use development where the first floor is commercial, with five floors of apartments above. However there are plenty of them that are purely residential. The main change was that only the first floor had to be built to commercial standards, however the top five floors are all residential-style wood framing which is much cheaper to build. Developers pushed hard for unified designs so that they didn't have to hire new design teams every time. Most of these projects are repeated patterns of symmetrical transpositions like shifting an aesthetic feature from left to right, or rotating the floor plans on a site. Stuff that can be done by a CAD professional without any need to pay a costly Architect or Engineer. Aesthetic features were intentionally limited and made into modular blocks so that a simple material specification change is all it would take to get zoning approval. Out here, there are noteworthy Architects penning public letters disparaging these developments on aesthetic grounds. However, these self-same professionals are famous for designs which are equally bleak, repetitive, and rectilinear. In my first-hand experience, the only difference between econo-block, and luxury bloc, is how much is spent on overpriced minimalist trim. Absolutely outrageous sums are spent on low-quality "luxury" light fixtures which are indistinguishable from the cheap stuff put in housing projects. I've seen more than one European art-house manufacturing firm that is clearly selling rebranded Asian import stuff at 20x the price. Tourism to cities with pre-WWII architecture is always higher than post-war which strongly suggests that the overwhelming majority of people prefer classical architecture to modernism, minimalism, or brutalism. It's been my experience that the overwhelming majority of Architects hold the opposite opinion. They've largely succeeded in convincing young people that a 70 year old aesthetic famously applied to the most hated low-income housing developments in world history is "modern" and "luxurious". Nope, it's cold, hard, loud, bleak, and intentionally dysfunctional. There's no room for your stuff, your spouse, or your kids, which sells vacations and storage units, while reducing the need for building schools.

It has been my experience that every metro area in the U.S. has a recent article claiming or predicting the fastest growth. Bad news is only ever reported in hindsight, usually within the confines of a prediction that things will improve. Out here, they level a farm to slap up depression-era style housing blocks and self-storage facilities following every foreclosure wave. We're supposed to believe we're seeing "growth", in a situation where none of the young working couples can afford to buy a home, or have kids. I read recently that there is a huge investment group that's buying some enormous percentage of homes on the market. They're not renting them out, so as to keep the home prices high. My bet is we're past the point where meaningful construction growth has slowed out here. Three months from now I'll expect to see trade journals predicting fourth quarter growth percentages that read like they're higher than the losses they'll only admit to then. But if you "do the math" on the figures presented, you'll see stuff like a 50% loss followed by a predicted 75% gain, which leaves you 12.5% below your starting point if they're right (and they never are).

Dan, I've never been to Serbia, however I'd be very surprised if your entire country had no harden-able steels for sale. When I first started blacksmithing, I didn't want to spend my time looking for resources, I wanted to work with whatever came to hand. That wasn't smart. I tended to select inferior materials of preposterous size, which wasted a lot of time. I grew frustrated, and sought ever-heavier hammers, and took the metal to higher temperatures, hoping to speed things along. Most of my early projects ended up burnt in two. I injured my elbow to such an extent that even years later, a little bit of light hammering is all I can take. As a beginner, many, to most, intermediate projects will require tool-making before the project stock is even heated. Initially, I thought that was optional, because I figured hard work would counteract the lack of tooling and skill. In most cases, doing things "the hard way" is only a viable path to failure lamely rebranded as "learning something". See, if I knew I doing something wrong, which led to failure, I wouldn't actually learn anything by that failure beyond confirmation of cause and effect. I recently watched a video about high performance kit cars. It started with a discussion of all the incredible values on offer. For only $X amount, you could have a working race car that performed on par with famous makers. Towards the end, the discussion shifted to the problems with this market. Namely, that most people never finish their kit cars. The absolute number one reason for not finishing is the "while I'm in there" trap. See people are building the car, and they decide to upgrade to "better" parts, which are always more money. This means that the project gets put on hold any time they have to save money for the upgraded parts. The whole process repeats itself until the owner realizes that they're never going to finish the kit. By then, the partially finished kit isn't worth much because there are no buyers for that condition. Car buyers want something that works. Kit buyers want to start from scratch. If your goal as a beginner is to make an axe, don't get sidelined trying to make high-carbon steel.

Not much to add beyond four suggestions. #1 Put a leather washer in between the ball ends of your handle for quieter operation. #2 Make a receptacle plate for the leg end to spread the forces so you don't hammer it through your deck! #3 Make a set of shims with through-rods such that the rods allow the shim to hang between the jaws on one side. That'll allow you to firmly hold long stock of equal size to the shim on the other side, bypassing the screw. Bonus points if you make them so they're on the vice stand without getting in the way of other work. #4 Find a way to securely hold a water vessel for ballast in that workmate. A five gallon bucket full of water will add about 50lbs of ballast, which helps a lot when you're trying to hot-twist stock. Make sure to find a metal cover for the bucket, as many high carbon steel projects have an insatiable desire to jump into slack tubs. Water is handy ballast because you can cheaply add whatever you need for the job at hand, then dump it when you're done.

The pickups on electric guitars are magnets wrapped in a coil of wire that's insulated with varnish. They are typically mounted so that the distance between pole pieces and metal guitar strings can be adjusted. It's counter-intuitive to many novices that the pickups need some distance to work properly. If they're a little too close, they generate weird harmonics which "flutter" under the dominant note. This is due to the magnetic coupling/dampening working against the induced magnetic fields within the coil of wire which generate the signal. If they're way too close, sustain suffers. Conversely, if the pickups are too far from the strings, the attack of the note diminishes, as does the volume. It's for this reason that most novices adjust their pickups too closely. They notice the increased volume because it's really obvious, but they don't realize that their pickups are actively working against the rest of the instrument. The optimal distance changes depending on the mass and tension of the string. Larger strings generally need more distance, smaller strings need less. Just like the bell, node placement matters. Pickups located closer to the mid span of the string tend to have a warmer, more voice-like timbre, whereas pickups located closer to the edge of the span tend to have a colder timbre like you would get from a brass horn. There's more amplitude at midspan than at the edge, so it's quite common for "neck" pickups to have fewer turns, lower magnetic flux, and smaller winding wire than "bridge" pickups. This allows the musician to switch between pickups without a huge change in volume.

Thomas, Enthusiastic time spent on a subject can run parallel to rigorous study, without ever crossing into factual understanding. I once met a nine and one quarter fingered owner of a gun store who went on and on about manufacturer accuracy guarantees being impossible. For those that don't know, rifle accuracy is generally expressed in Minutes of Angle. We all know there are 360 degrees in a circle, well each degree may be divided into sixty minutes of angle, which may be divided into sixty seconds of angle. The practical application of which is to imagine a right triangle arranged such that one corner is the shooter, one corner is the impact point, and the right angle corner is placed at the bullseye. The hypotenuse is the straight line between shooter and point of impact. One hundred yards is 3,600 inches. The tangent of 1/60 degrees therefore equals (one minute of angle in inches)/3600 All of which factors out to 1.047" Which means that for all practical purposes, a minute of angle is equal to approximately one inch per hundred yards of range. Precision is a measure of repeatability, whereas accuracy is the capacity to hit the intended target. There's an underlying assumption that a precise rifle can be adjusted to where it will repeatedly deliver tight groups on the point of aim. For most people, the equipment is capable of better performance than their skills will allow. Mr. 92.5% took all of that and added his own unique twist. See in practical terms, all of these measurements are based on the resulting holes in the target. The size of those holes is obviously dependent on the size of the projectile. He believed that you measure the largest outside to outside dimension of the group, then subtract half the projectile diameter. The resulting dimension is what he compares to the minute of angle dispersion for whatever distance he's at. I explained that it doesn't make sense to have an accuracy standard that is caliber specific. He didn't understand. So I offered the following example. Let's say you had a rifle with a 1" projectile and you fired two shots that went perfectly through the bullseye at 100 yards. He replied "That's a half minute rifle". I said, no, it's perfect accuracy because the center of the projectiles are perfectly and repeatedly coinciding with the point of aim. You're supposed to subtract the full projectile diameter from the measurement. We were at a bit of an impasse, so the subject changed to some really small handguns in the case. He removed one from the case. I watched him cleared the action with the stump of his left index finger right at the barrel crown, and the index of his right on the trigger. Speaking as he did so, he remarked that "This is just like the one that took my finger..." Right around that point I realized how things "added up" with this gent and made my exit.

Bantou, I see your point, and I also see how you took my wording. I actually intended my suggestion of the "most important" question to apply to the first half. Broadly speaking, I think Plato supports portions your argument, however I would add that he goes into great depth about why it's not reasonable or just to explain the higher minded reasons of things to the cave dwellers. Your comment definitely applies to me personally, and professionally. I came up through the trades, went to college, and work in management of that trade. Many of my professional colleagues are college graduates with limited, and heavily "sanitized" field experience. By and large college internships in the construction industry feature a remarkable lack of difficult situations. For example, spending eight hours working upside down in a trench. Mostly they act as bystanders wearing fluorescent safety gear and carry a clipboard. This whole thing get's a bit slippery depending on where you start a given person in the allegory. Take the intern watching the trench crew from my example. That empirical observation of "life in the cave" may be based on watching masters of their craft doing an ugly task, just as plausibly as it may be based on watching ham-fisted apprentices doing everything the hard way. The intern would have no way to know. I would argue that this makes the intern a prisoner in the cave. Now, send that same intern back to college and teach them everything about how construction contracting is performed. All the hard work, knowledge, material sciences, all of it is ultimately a shadow of objects placed in front of the light source. What is the giver of all light in the construction world? Contracts. Contracts define what you do, when you do it, what you don't do, what you will be paid, and what happens when things change or go wrong. Everything thereafter is about professionals at companies arranging their affairs to trade risk for reward. This is why it's often profitable to employ skilled people to do, and build, stupid things. All employment is trading in human potential. Sending the now "enlightened" graduate into the field to run stuff doesn't guarantee greater perspective, judgement, or morality. The "blinding light of truth" in practical terms will mean that many contracts will require tunnel vision, slavish devotion to avoiding legal snags, and pushing risk off onto others. The only way to avoid this humiliating waste of human potential is to pursue contracts with clients who cultivate trusting working relationships which don't require vicious enforcement of their contracts. That is not taught at the University I attended, and I strongly suspect it's not in the curriculum of most other schools either. It's been my experience that most contractors and subcontractors are unaware of this principal beyond horse-trading change orders while speaking in platitudes about "building relationships". Much of this was explained to me by working journeymen during my apprenticeship. I would argue that these journeymen were the prisoner returning to the cave, since it was childishly hopeful gibberish to most who heard them. I would also argue that pushing those "enlightened" Journeymen into management via the Peter principle, is how this industry has formed the managerial equivalent of coprolites. I'm sure that most of us can think of awful managers who have an abundance of education and experience. I believe influence is the most important fundamental of leadership. That's a dynamic property, driven by trust and engagement. I've seen many projects where everything just "fell into place" so well that one might never notice the leader at work. Instead of assuming that education or experience will fill in this gap, let's consider what a person would have to do in order to achieve trust and engagement with the workers. I submit that anything we might put on that list amounts to sincerely validating human potential, and honestly addressing the realities of the situation. In other words, you've got to do the best you can, with what you have, right now.

I'm going to suggest it's less about politics, and more about understanding how philosopher's operate. Look at the major lessons of the first half, We can't trust empirical evidence to know what we're doing in the world. We are as blinded by truth as we are by the concealment of truth. "Who are you going to believe, me, or your lying eyes?" The second half attempts to apply this understanding to morality and leadership, without answering the most important question of all. That question is pretty simple. "What practical purpose can any of this serve?" Well, it promotes further study of philosophy, which mostly hobbles egos by creating questions which can't be answered. I think they teach the first half to hone critical thinking skills, and temper hubris, which are valuable lessons. Once you've got those, it starts to make sense why a philosopher would recommend putting philosophers in charge.

JHCC, Thank you for the additions, and the explanations. Like the students you mentioned, I didn't know about the "second half" either. That being said, I was talking to my kids about this which got me to thinking about the the returning prisoner. Imagine trying to explain colors to people who've only ever seen firelit stone and shadow. Concepts like seeing your own reflection seem a bit like mimicking magic to someone with a sense of their own proportions. The prisoners are chained down which implies that they have no tactile reference for their own bodies. In comparison, a blind person can tell that their fingers are shorter than their arms, and that their nose is above their mouth. Imagine trying to establish common ground on such simple things! Even with great patience, skill, and compassion, the returning prisoner would likely sound like a raving lunatic to the chained prisoners. Now imagine working through all that's necessary to convey how cell phones work. That could take years of effort. After all of that effort, imagine trying to explain to the chained prisoner why some people prefer not to answer calls!

I saw a quote attributed to H.L, Mencken recently that really resonated with me. "For every complex problem, there is a solution that is clear, simple, and wrong." Indeed we live in a time where it's relatively easy to amass "proof" of whichever side of an issue one might choose. Objective truth is buried in, well... stuff that isn't objective truth. I think there are a lot of people who see that as a feature, not a bug. Some of them strike me as being smart, reasonable and decent people in other respects, so why is this happening? The Greek Philosopher Plato, may have the answer with his "Allegory of the cave". It goes like this. Imagine a cave in which there are three prisoners. The prisoners are tied to some rocks, their arms and legs are bound and their head is tied so that they cannot look at anything but the stone wall in front of them. These prisoners were born in the cave, and know nothing else. Behind the prisoners is a fire, and between them is a raised walkway. People outside the cave walk along this walkway carrying things on their head including animals, plants, wood and stone. Consider the prisoners perspective. They spend their lives looking at shadows on the wall. To the prisoners, the shadows are real objects. To pass the time the prisoners begin a game of guessing which shadow will appear next. When one guesses correctly, the others praise him as clever and say that he is a master of nature. Now imagine that one of the prisoners escapes their bindings, and then the cave. Everything he thought of reality is proven wrong. Eventually he comes to understand the "new" world through an intellectual journey that touches on beauty and meaning. He's aware that the guessing game of his former life was useless. The prisoner returns to the cave to tell the other of what he's found. They do not believe him, and threaten to kill him if he tries to set them free. Based on what I've read, Plato's allegory was trying to represent the following; The cave represents people who believe that knowledge comes from what we see and hear in the world. The shadows represent the perceptions of those who believe empirical evidence ensures knowledge. The game represents how people believe that one person can be a "master" when they have knowledge of the empirical world. The escaped prisoner represents a philosopher who seeks knowledge outside the senses. The other prisoners reaction to the escapee returning represents how people fear philosophical truths. On some level, I think there's a practical need to do the best with what you've got at the moment. A person can't launch into a philosophical vision quest before deciding on what to have for lunch every day. That being said, a whole lot of what we think we know, just doesn't factor much into what we're trying to achieve. There was a cute example of this in "A Study in Scarlet" where Watson revealed that Holmes didn't know or care that the planets revolved around the sun, because it didn't help his investigations. Indeed, I bet most of us can recall a time where an expert's solution to a practical question, overlooked undesired outcomes which affected things outside of the expert's interest. In this case, the experts truly are excellent resources, assuming you're chained to the same rock as them. What do you think?

SinDoc, I'm the Chief Estimator for an Electrical Contractor, we're seeing people "win" bids by the exact amount that material pricing went up the day before. New work has dried up because banks can't/won't finance projects where the material pricing is constantly jumping up. PVC went up 300% over 20 days back in April, I doubt there was a 3% change in PVC pricing over the previous 9 years. Making everything worse, is the sad fact that most of the factory admins, reps and distributors went all-in on "work from home" without any kind of quality control. Lots of otherwise good people became distracted, and error-prone generators of delay. I know of two firms in the last week who had to pay seriously ugly material price hikes that happened after I issued the Purchase Order, but before their staff could get around to completing the transaction. Most of these firms skated by during the pandemic because material prices were relatively stable, and everything slowed down. Now, they're paying real penalties for delays due to their mismanagement. With new work harder to come by, ownership might notice there's a management problem.

Das, Couple of details really stood out for me. The bolt and bearing to make the selector switch was inspired, especially since the bearing conveys the round trim plate. The other was the way you positioned the bolts on the head stock to mimic the tuning machine posts. A lot of people might have overlooked that many/most electric guitars have tuning pegs at a right angle to the tuning machine post. I also love how you used heat coloring on the sprockets. Beyond that, I think it's funny that your total weight is remarkably close to the high end of a real Les Paul! They're famously heavy. Should you decide to re-visit a guitar sculpture, you could add fretboard inlays which typically mark frets 3, 5, 7, 9, 12, 15, 17, and 19. The head stock is cocked back 17 degrees on a Les Paul. That's a subtle detail that a guitarist would appreciate.

Scalebar, In my opinion, hot rasping is a bit of a different animal than normal filing. First off, the hot metal needs to be held in a vice, which means you're rapidly losing heat, unless the hot end is thick enough to support itself out from the jaws. I have found it's best to use the metal cutting side of a farriers rasp for hot rasping. Technique is a bit different here too as I try for more of a skipping hit, than a set-push-lift-retract routine. This is because the hot metal tends to grab the teeth of the file. That, and you've gotta hustle while the work is hot. I have used coarse "normal" files for hot rasping, but since the goal is speedy stock removal, it's much more efficient to use the farrier's rasp which is wider, and longer than most average files. Plus, I find the width of the farrier's rasp to be advantageous for maintaining flat planar cuts. Be advised that the first few licks will cut a whole lot easier than the next couple, and so on. This isn't the best choice for fine stock removal as you're likely losing material to scale with each heat. Finally, give some thought to how you clamp and support the stock for hot rasping. A lot of work won't allow a secure supportive hold, without blocking access to the spot you're trying to rasp.

George, I think human nature is going to enforce limits on what we can, and can't find time to care about. Incentives make a huge difference in that estimation. Risk versus reward is often presented as a two axis problem, it's not. As often as not, the choices we face today, are a result of the choices we made before. Whether that's positive or negative is up to interpretation. For example, I avoid working with dishonest clients. As a result, I'm less popular in certain markets. There are times where those markets are the only ones with viable work out to bid. What about new or unfamiliar clients? How do I go about determining if they're honest? I can't name an area of science, media, or industry which hasn't generated an equal measure of noise to fact. A great deal of very intentional effort has been put into creating "proof" that whatever side you want to choose, is correct. We actually have scientists publishing articles where they are quoted as saying "the science is settled" on something in their area of expertise! Science is the unending pursuit of knowledge. Faith is belief in the unproven. That distinction is intentionally blurred in pursuit of personal objectives. I don't think this is a new tactic. Honest efforts to sort all that out lead to lots of finger pointing, no accountability, everything goes tribal. I think that's a tragic waste of human potential. I don't know if it helps everyone, but I find some solace in accepting uncertainty, so I can focus on (my) actual problems. I started this post because it struck me that my distributor may have a different view of my "problem". Everything here is still uncertain, but I did gain one meaningful thing. I could argue that this administrator is incompetent, which makes it less advantageous to work with this distributor. I could equally argue that this distributor's business model makes it less advantageous to work with them. Focusing on business priorities, the cause doesn't matter as much as the effect. We continue to work with this distributor because they charge less, which helps to offset their administrative shortcomings. As the person living through "groundhog day" with this irritating administrator, it's important to retain my professionalism, so as to maximize the benefit of this distributor's lower rates. To that end, it's a whole lot easier to interact with this person on the presumption that they're playing a dullards role. Their limitations, real or feigned, are no cause for personal offense. I'm free to work around this obstacle as efficiently as I can. In the unlikely event that this causes offence, I will have succeeded in creating pressure to change the status quo. Now that may well lead to increased difficulty in working with this distributor, which would negate the business incentive to work with them. However, what are my alternatives? If I don't work around the administrator, nothing will get done and my business will suffer. I may not have clearly mentioned this before, but efforts to talk it out with this administrator have been fruitless.

Are grit files and diamond impregnated steel plates the same thing? If so, I suspect that you will find that many of the most affordable ones are pretty fine grits as compared to a file.

Frosty, As always, I appreciate your thought-provoking responses. I hope all the voices in your head can agree they're a choir of elegance! Your last statement put some memories into a new context. A long time ago I worked for a firm that was way better than the sum of its parts. Everyone loved working with them because the work was always smooth and profitable. At the helm were two individuals, each with pretty serious personality issues. Reinforcing George's point above, their combined efforts were profoundly effective and I have no qualms about giving them due credit for creating an excellent company. They began with some profoundly simple concepts, rigorously applied them, and built systems around human nature. I've never worked for a company that was more sincere about its employee training than this one. They told you what they cared about, why they cared about it, how their process was applied, and enforced. It was very thorough. This was a demanding place to work because ownership would spot check anything you did. If they found any loose ends, hesitation, equivocating, etc., the focus would spread, and their investigations would intensify. It's really important to point out that they were like this with everyone from senior management to interns. Hardworking people who stammered their way through, got coaching on how to present their work with greater confidence, clarity, etc. Honest mistakes were addressed fairly, but with sufficient clarity to convey the relative security of your position. Some people struggled more than others, but everyone did good work in the end. In the years since that company folded, I've crossed paths with many of my old colleagues. Most of them are working for firms riddled with incompetence and dishonesty.

I think that's a very elegant way to summarize what I'm seeing here. George, I'll freely admit that this administrator might be excellent at all sorts of things. In fact, my whole point was that I suspect they're actually excellent at reducing overhead, risk, and work for their firm. I've certainly worked for mischief makers who feigned ignorance, faulty hearing, or poor recollection whenever it suited them. There are a lot of malefactors who operate on the good faith of others who charitably assume that the obstructionist in question must be good at other things. Whether we agree to call them clods, or post-turtles, (love that by the way!) makes little practical difference because the implication is that we're entering into a "judge not lest ye be judged" balancing act. This places all of the focus on the individual, not the organizational plan. I've come to see the truth in the old expression "personnel is policy", as I've yet to personally encounter an honest firm with a dodgy employee running rogue. After all the plausible deny-ability was exhausted, and the plain truth of the dishonesty was laid bare, the bosses were always worse than their employees. Getting there involved a lot of obstructive people who conveniently refused to notice how the "unintentional outcomes" of their actions tended to reward one side, at the expense of the other. That right there is the real cost of doing business with them. I know that our firm will furnish hours upon hours of painful technical support whenever we contract with this distributor. Whenever competing sales agents come asking what they can do to earn my business, I'll tell them what I'm currently up against.

My kid was complaining about how "group assignments" always seem to involve a member that doesn't do their share of the work. I'm sure most of us can relate. In my case, I got to thinking of some co-workers/colleagues in a new/different light. For example, one of our distributors has an administrator who handles all project material orders, warranty replacements, shipping, etc. The materials are not only trade-specific, they're often involved in complex assemblies. As a result, the manufacturers will have their agents asking lots of very technical questions. All of this is funneled through the distributors administrator who possesses zero technical knowledge, and all the social skills of an alarm clock. I'm often on the receiving end of emails with sentence fragment questions, appended to vague threats that material orders will be delayed. Nine times out of ten, the job name isn't in the email title. I have to be careful to answer within the administrators level of knowledge, or else the response passed through to the factory agents will be incorrect. For some time now, I've considered this administrator to be incompetent. I'm a bit isolated in this perspective, as my boss greatly appreciates how this dogged administrator never forgets to submit timely paperwork. It does bear mentioning that my boss doesn't have to answer the questions. I got to wondering how this person could go on for years behaving as a massive obstacle to progress. At a minimum, it seems like they'd learn the basics of what we're all talking about. Yet any effort to refer to this person's past experience evokes an almost prideful declaration of their ignorance. Here's the thing. This administrator is such an effective obstacle, that the entire market works around them to resolve issues, answer questions, etc. Now that obviously benefits the administrator by reducing their work. But it also benefits the administrator's boss who doesn't find it necessary to hire someone more knowledgeable to handle these issues. From a purely practical standpoint this administrator generates a finely calibrated level of obstruction, which massively reduces this distributors overhead, while also creating a perfect level of plausible deny-ability for the owner. All that's needed to prevent customers from pursuing less annoying distributors, is to offer low enough markup to make it a sound business practice to put up with them. Now please don't read this to imply that this administrator is a Machiavellian genius of calibrated misery. I think it's more than a little likely that they're simply blessed with an abrasive personality, poor social skills, and an unhealthy obsession with Accounting. They're merely the owner's view of what the "perfect" person for this job would resemble. Before you decide that a co-worker is incompetent, maybe consider if management shares your goals. Until and unless I can find a cost-effective replacement for this distributor, I'll have to work around this administrator to get my job done.

gmbobnick, It occurs to me that you might investigate "ranchette" development sites. Wealthy out-of-towners who want a piece of heaven, without all the hard work of actually maintaining stock. Many of these ventures build a few model homes to provide context, inspiration, etc. to their clients. These houses are typically furnished with unique pieces meant to convey a specific aesthetic vision. I suspect the developer's interior design firm might be a good lead for you. There are highway billboards down here in Colorado advertising Wyoming Horse ranches for sale. Another potential lead might be high-end dude/guest ranches. We scrimped and saved to have a vacation at an Orvis listed ranch that was absolutely amazing. Every piece of furniture was obviously hand-made and the ranch took great pride in Wyoming's craftsmen. You never know when a guest at the ranch might decide they need western furniture back home. I was sincerely surprised at how many far-flung attorneys and surgeons loved to "play cowboy" at a luxury guest ranch for a couple weeks every year. The other angle that might help, is if you made furniture suited to events like family reunions, weddings, etc. Many of those ranches convert themselves from "horsey paradise" to Palatial gardens of matrimony several times a year. They don't always rely on rented white foldables. Some go to great lengths to have perfectly calibrated levels of rustic furniture to make the entire venue look just so. "Glamping" is a hot ticket at a lot of these places as well. They set up a huge tent that's fully furnished with luxurious furniture inside. Depending on your interests, you might "pitch" the idea of a unique furniture theme for each tent, cabin, or room.

Anvil, I've competed on the Mesa, and the Buttes. I've built projects of near exactly equal quality, and cost on both markets. High end work is not exclusive to negotiated agreements. Incredibly skilled craftsman who deliver uncompromising quality often work for firms that competitively bid everything they build. It's obviously wrong to assume that competition rewards compromise. When a runner wins a race, they have proven their ability. When a contractor delivers a project they competitively bid, they have also proven their ability. Sniping about incentives to maximize efficiency is like insisting that the winning runner should have run further than their competitors. The fabled tortoise didn't beat the hare by increasing the distance, but by steadily making efficient progress. Construction entrepreneurs have some of the highest failure rates of any industry. The "build it and they will come" business models represent the majority. Many of them stake their life's worth on a venture founded on their deep admiration for craft, quality, and old-fashioned values of doing their absolute best. They fail because they assume that fundamentals of economics won't apply to the morally virtuous. This philosophy conveniently provides fodder to criticize everyone who earned their success in business. Being unable, or unwilling to compete, is a hallmark of unfounded/untested faith. I don't begrudge anyone who does honest work for a living. The market "Buttes" of which I speak are not monastic retreats which exist to reward fussy and demanding artists. History is full of failed kingdoms, economics applies to everyone eventually. The attitude of entitlement, the condescending and slippery notions of "quality" are all things that "butte" clients will not tolerate. Clients like this didn't reach the level where they can be this selective without a firm grasp on business fundamentals. Anybody can commission an overpriced piece from an arrogant artist who works at their leisure. All it takes is money, patience, and ear plugs. I'm sure there are clients who want the bragging rights of having commissioned something by a notoriously difficult artist. That being said, many of histories greatest artists died as paupers because clients like that are few and far in between.