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I Forge Iron

rockstar.esq

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  1. Steven, Thank you for sharing your point of view. I admire your commitment to your career. As it happens, I have tried to "fix" my corner of the world by writing a blog to teach people about my area of expertise. I truly hope that you continue your good work. George, The expression "you get what you pay for" is one that you've repeated a couple of times. Gosh, I wish I could pick up some hamburger, pay the clerk $100 and leave with Wagu beef. Don't get me wrong, I understand that you're trying to make the counter argument that we can't expect Wagu for hamburger prices. My point is that expression works from the assumption that cost causes value which is a logical fallacy. I'm an estimator for an Electrical Contractor. I have to win every dollar of revenue my company gets in a year, by competitively bidding. Market value is continuously re-defined by this process. Most competitive bids in my market are won by less than 1%, which reduces risk to the client by building a consensus of market leaders as to what a specific project is worth. When these projects move forward, a design deficiency is eventually discovered. The winning bidder, who proved themselves to be a market leader, is asked to provide and price, a solution. A goodly percentage of the time, the design professionals (who knew their plans were incomplete) will clutch pearls, pretending that whatever price was presented is unfair. Eventually someone will say "what did you expect from the lowest bidder"? This person never know the market price for anything. My detailed breakouts show how every penny came to be. They don't know if it's right or wrong. So you know what they complain about? 5% profit, and whether the plans contained a catch-all note pushing the responsibility for some unknowable thing onto the bidder, instead of the design professional who is paid to ensure that the plan is complete. You know what they do from there? They spend half a dozen meetings complaining, cajoling, and bargaining until they've consumed so much of my labor, that I'll be lucky if the 5% covers my overhead. Now not all of my clients are this way, only the worst ones. The clients who "save" money by hiring hack design teams, then staffing the "owner's rep" position with an antiquarian incompetent, or a team of indecisive incompetents. Would it surprise anyone to learn that there are building types which are especially prone to this combination? Schools, Churches, and Clinics. What do these things have in common? They don't compete to secure their future, and they don't have to prove their value to retain their work. Burnout is quite high in my vocation, because the demanding disrespect of dullards on all sides is only eclipsed by the looming specter of incompetent competitors who drive the market value down on their Kamikaze mission to ruin themselves. We get up early, and we stay up late. We compete, we provide transparency, and we are still expected to use the back door when entering our job sites. Our work is inspected, and when problems arise that threaten the public, our licenses are revoked. That level of personal accountability, transparency, and humility goes completely unnoticed, yet as taxpayers, we're supposed to just make charitable assumptions to suspend all consideration of value because "there are some good people" in the education industry. George, Colorado is currently spending $5.2 Million over six years to figure out why our kids can't read. My company is building a high school at a total cost of nearly $6 Million, which only has four classrooms. Please don't misunderstand me, it's the only building on the campus, it's geared towards agricultural students, and it doesn't have a garden, or an animal pen. Not even a chicken coop. It does however, feature a bleak, minimalist interpretation of a barn to the exterior façade. Just enough to show that the design could have respected the traditional aesthetic, but chose not to. It's a yet another Colorado Architecture effort for the Borg assimilation. The construction specifications standards for public schools are so antiquated that we are literally not permitted to use cost-effective industry standard methods or materials. Minor remodel projects for existing Colorado Public Schools are in perpetual design for years before they get built in three months. I know because I provide free conceptual estimates on them to help the design team to stay within their budget. They never do. After years of design, these plans still fail to include basic information, which is obviously necessary to build the job. Invariably, the "final" drawing set will include one or two "gotcha" requirements which are only noted on drawing which has nothing to do with the requirement. One that I've hit upon twice in my career, is a single key note on an architectural elevation that reads "replace dimming panel". If you dig far enough, you'll learn that "dimming panel" is a commercial quality, custom designed, theatrical lighting system worth $70,000, which may only be purchased through one vendor representative in another state. Collectively, the Colorado Public Schools generate a huge summer rush of construction work every single year. It's uniformly inefficient, aesthetically hideous, and laden with unnecessary expense. The higher education schools are several orders of magnitude worse. They put their "global" construction standards on an unsearchable website which is never mentioned on the bid documents. You only learn about them when you get your contract. The electrical standards are so antiquated that we can't even find new old stock of the required materials. Some would have been outdated in the 1950's. These are schools with Colleges of Electrical Engineering, Colleges of Architecture, etc. The deans of these departments often conduct impromptu inspections of the work on site. Roughly twelve years ago, parents contested curriculum changes in Jefferson County. The school board wanted curriculum that is so provably bad, it's been outlawed in several states. Parents at the school board meeting were arrested for arguing against it. They barely secured an opt-out provision. That curriculum is backed by multi-billionaires. Things aren't this broken by accident, it's done this way by design. Sincere people are caught in the middle until they lose faith in the goodness of others. I have no desire to discourage faith in humanity. I still think good people outnumber the bad. Our problem is that everyone assumes that "benefit of the doubt" thinking imbues a good-faith relationship. They trust, but don't verify. This isn't limited to just schools, or architecture, or construction. It's everywhere. There's an amazing article entitled "Everything is broken" by Alana Newhouse. Her ability to concisely identify underlying dysfunction is absolutely amazing. Like Steven, she concludes that we should all strive to create a better version.
  2. Goods, your generosity speaks to your character, I really appreciate people like yourself who have helped us with homeschooling. George, I respect your point of view, and freely accept that it's in line with the majority, which is why we homeschool. When you mention that it's a mix of good and bad, I think you're absolutely correct. The majority are somewhere between incompetent and doing actual harm, the minority, are compensating to the best of their ability. None of these teachers are getting fired for incompetency, which likely suggests that all attrition is due to good teachers recognizing that they're on the losing side. The objective measures of the composite performance bears this out. The mantra "there are some good teachers", is like asking how much dog poo you want in your chocolate sundae. Spending more at the ice cream shop simply expands the business model. Anywhere else in society, we'd shut that down as a public health violation. For everyone talking about "innovation" as the problem, I encourage them to consider the source. Higher education isn't interested in fixing this, as there's far more money in perpetuating a problem whose only solution is further investment in education. Nature gives you more of whatever you encourage. The incredible increase in home schooling suggests that public schools are encouraging parents to seek alternatives. I suspect the "some good teachers" mantra will lose it's luster when parents realize that virtually anyone can do a better job, by not using public school curriculum, texts, and methods.
  3. Incorrect, I wrote that less than half are proficient. The majority are not. While I appreciate the positive spin on things, I think the standard distribution bell curve would apply to population intelligence as well. That would suggest that 66% are within one standard deviation of average intelligence, with 16.5% being low outliers, and 16.5% being high outliers. Taken in sum, 82.5% of the population is within one standard deviation of average or above. Colorado barely cracks 40% on literacy proficiency any given year. That suggests that there's less than a 50/50 chance that a student of average to above average intelligence will learn to read in the Colorado School system. Every Colorado parent should consider how fundamental literacy is to ALL LEARNING and then ask themselves how they feel about flipping a coin on their kids future. It's also worth pointing out that the low outliers aren't in general population, they're in special ed which isn't counting in these totals. Please note that all of this data predates the last year of school shutdowns which have reduced the class time for everyone. Even online schools are operating at less than 50%. We've tried Charter, Magnet, and Classical schools here, there was no escaping the structural opposition to effective teaching or learning, so we homeschool. It may sound cynical or unkind to say this, but I sincerely think it's possible that Colorado students will get smarter because they've had less exposure to our teachers.
  4. I've recently been struggling with a case of bader-meinhoff syndrome myself. I noticed that whenever I lead my observations with empathy, I overlook things that become obvious when I focus on objectivity first. Ever since I started with objectivity first, empathy second, I've noticed that most social dysfunction hinges on people "giving the benefit of the doubt" to situations where only the actor's intent is in doubt, the outcome is obvious. In this case, the empathetic response focuses on the embarrassing spectacle of someone making a humiliating mistake. Broadcasting their mistake, and their subsequent struggles to rectify that mistake, only compounds the humiliation. Flip it the other way, you've got a teacher, someone whose entire career is defined by imparting her knowledge to other people. Using social media platform to demonstrate her knowledge to other people is a natural extension thereof. Here in Colorado, less than half of public school students are proficient at reading at all grade levels. Objectively speaking, illiteracy is the primary outcome. The "benefit of the doubt" perspective would chime in with "there are some good teachers", again largely speaking to their intentions, their effort, etc. Let's agree with that premise and apply it to this teacher. She clearly intended to share her knowledge with others, and selflessly exposed herself to demonstrate her knowledge. It's fair to say that she's doing her best work here. So what has she taught us? Well, for starters, she has illustrated the dangers of illiteracy as clearly as she has exposed it's source. I believe the lesson here is that the public should be more objective about what public school teachers are actually doing.
  5. Connor, Most enterprises discover that finding buying customers at a profitable level for the business is more complicated than simple proximity. Human nature leads to lots of recognizable patterns. People tend to protect their patch. If the patch is valuable, people will find way's around that protection. If the newcomers are successful, they will put new protections in place. For example, let's say a local restaurant district is booming during certain hours. Rent is high, and it's expensive to build. So chefs buy food trucks and set up shop in that district. If the local restaurants have enough power to run the trucks off, things stay the same. If they don't, the barriers to starting a food truck business in that area will increase. Conversely, people will not invest in protecting things they don't value. It's up to the individual to look at these patters to decide if they're looking at an undiscovered opportunity, or a bad idea. It's also worth pointing out that most opportunities are only viable as a business when combined with excellent timing. Applying all of this to your idea, I think it's reasonable to suggest that your welcome at any given market will be inversely proportional to the viability of that market.
  6. Be advised that many commercial property leases have provisions where the owner retains any improvements you make. Installing stuff like a sink or a light fixture might be the only way to use the space, but the landlord get's to keep it when you leave. In some cases, they will also require that you remove the installed stuff when you leave, but they keep the material. I see a lot of commercial remodel projects with everything from built-in millwork to chandeliers sitting on the floor of a demolished space. I don't know what size of space you're looking for, but be advised that hard-up property managers will often subdivide a space to appeal to renters with smaller needs, but they don't always invest in subdividing the utilities. It would be difficult for me to name a group more entrenched in dishonest and unprofessional construction practices than the property management firms who cater to low rent clientele. Much of the work is done without permit or inspection, by unlicensed professionals who cheat one another to survive. Another thing to contemplate is your neighbors. I've worked for tenants and landlords in commercial spaces where there were extremely dangerous operations going on next door, but nobody on the regulatory side had caught on. I've also worked in quite a few situations where the neighbors were an attractive nuisance. Above and beyond all of that, I would like to suggest that you consider how the recent/ongoing pandemic regulations will affect your operation. Being locked out of your business is a very real possibility in some areas.
  7. Up in Loveland there's a place called "Uncle Benny's" that re-sells construction materials. It's an eclectic mix in there but I've bought steel folding sawhorses for $20.00 there. They fold up and nest inside of each other to take less storage room. Commercial electrical contractors are constantly removing old electrical panels. The "tub" of the panel is bent sheet metal with welded corners. Since it's pretty rare for anything to come out of the back side of an electrical panel, the tubs are mostly flat and hole free on the back. If you set the open side down on two sawhorses, the sides of the panel tub would make the entire thing far more rigid with little weight. Panel tubs come in several lengths which might allow you to support your forge and any stock sticking out of it. I've used panel tubs for sand filled side-blast forges for years.
  8. MJ, George, There are lots of cool tool names in blacksmithing. Monkey tool Butcher Ducks nest Bending forks Header Hot rasp / Hot cut Bick Pritchel Punch There are also a lot of terms used in blacksmithing that have marketing appeal Slip fit White heat Hot set Planishing or Planished Fire welded Bloomery Crucible Striker Put them together for a funny slogan; "Here at Bick, Pritchel, and Punch, we deliver slip fits at white heats".
  9. Shaun1565, One of my earlier suggestions was to translate local city names from their original language. For example Milwaukee, is Algonquin for "The good land". Another angle is to identify the name of a prominent geographical feature. I've worked for Crow Creek Construction, and Stone Mountain Machine for example. Both were named for the birthplace of their founder. With all that being said, I would advise against naming your business after battlefields, politicians, religious figures, celebrities, massacres, cemeteries, religious sites, or military bases to avoid offending potential customers. I would also recommend you at least consider putting what you actually do or make in the name. I'm old enough to remember when every fast food place put "Restaurant" on their sign. Now, it's rare to find anything so well defined. Out where I live, the "branding" on churches is so minimalist and meaningless that they are easily confused with the lumber yards, warehouses, and pharmacies they "converted" into churches. Most of my local hospitals do not actually have the word "Hospital" on their monument sign. Most call themselves "Medical Centers" which is a term that is used by office parks for everyone from eye to foot doctors. At some level, marketing is about making your business stand out from everything else. Extreme minimalism is the most popular naming aesthetic, which means that any business with an understandable, informative name will stand out. As you're considering options, I would recommend that you conduct some keyword searches to determine how popular a term is. An unpopular, but immediately understandable term in your name may put you on the first page of search engine results without paying for advertising. Big river blacksmithing Desert star iron work
  10. "Forge" is a perfect word to ensure that you'll be hard to find online. Marketing people have used it for anything from lemonade to umbrellas. Those that don't know about blacksmithing will potentially assume it's a reference to the crime of forgery. I may never understand why blacksmiths have such affection for this term, but it's at least my hope that you'll understand that business marketing is a separate consideration altogether. A business name that get's you buried in page 200 of search engine results is a liability. If you doubt what I'm saying, just search for "Forge" on a search engine and count how many blacksmiths appear on the front page. In contrast, nobody names themselves XYZ Bellows, or XYZ Slack Tub. To that end, please consider the absolute fortune that was spent by marketers to teach the world that "GAP" means clothing company. A garage based business probably doesn't have that kind of money. It's my belief that anything involving politics, or religion/mythology should have no part in a business that's not explicitly political or religious/mythological. There are two reasons for this. #1, it's been done by a mind numbing number of people already, and #2, your name shouldn't work against the success of the business. People love nature and geography. Lots of city names are surprisingly awesome when translated from their original language. If you want to stand out, maybe name the business for what you actually make without intentionally awkward misspellings, or faux-foreign words. I kid you not, I followed a vehicle in traffic that was labeled "Ironwerx". The entire vehicle was covered in a wrap with that word all over it. "Follow us on social media" was plastered everywhere. In the smallest font, in one corner of the tailgate, it finally admitted that it's somehow related to a weightlifting gym.
  11. A monk may spend their days meditating on the question of why people live without contemplating the meaning of their actions. A captain of industry may spend their days locked in a struggle to extract as much of their potential as they can within the time they have on earth. Each may be occupying a place "at the top" that Whittaker alluded to. Each may consider their path to be obvious, and readily followed. So why doesn't everyone do this? Well, by and large the answer is pretty simple. Perspective. Let's apply Whittaker's comment to climbing a metaphorical mountain. You start out by climbing towards the peak when it's the tallest thing on your horizon. As you progress, the landscape changes. Challenges present themselves, and alternate paths are revealed. Since we're talking about marching up to the pinnacle of human achievement, it's reasonable to assume that the challenges will include stuff like lightning strikes, starvation, whiteout snowfall, avalanches, etc. The path will narrow, and sometimes disappear. Anyone tied to your lifeline will need to do their part. Just like K2, both the right and the wrong paths are marked by the frozen corpses of predecessors. Many of whom died following a Sherpa who'd made the summit before. When everyone is just blindly putting one foot in front of the other, what separates the winners from the losers? Nothing. Both groups applied their full potential to a blind test of faith. Those that succeed in achieving their summit, saw their faith rewarded. I would argue that those that failed did too. Climbing that mountain blind isn't about practicality, achieving potential, or perseverance, it's about testing faith in their perspective. What does a monk on a deserted and lofty mountaintop know of problems in the foothills? I think the likeliest answer is that nothing matters more than reaching a perch on which to proclaim that nothing else matters. That's probably the truth as they see it. They certainly earned their perspective. Speaking of perspective, I think a 100 level micro-economics concept needs to be presented. Let's say you've got a couple on a tropical island. The only readily available food is fish, and coconuts. They live halfway between the trees and the shore but it's a long enough walk that you can't do each in the same day. Each person needs five coconuts and four fish per day to be satisfied. Any surplus food is eaten by poisonous insects. Larry can gather ten coconuts, or four fish in a day. Jane can gather twelve coconuts or ten fish in a day. Obviously Jane is better at everything than Larry is. However, if Jane trades Larry four fish for five coconuts, they are both better off than if neither party made the trade. Jane is one fish "richer" than Larry is. Sharp eyed observers may think it would be better to simply divide their spoils every night. That would certainly add half a fish to Larry's plate. However, it would also deter Jane from doing her best since she her reward for catching that tenth fish of the day has dropped by half. Larry too, benefits from the motivation in this trade agreement since anything short of ten coconuts threatens his survival. Notice how neither party can afford to be a Monk, or a Captain of Industry here? Free trade generates incentives and deterrents which motivate people towards efficiency and cooperation. Historically speaking, life without free trade is nasty, brutish, and short. "Taking on debt" is often presented as though it's an entrepreneurial trap, supported by flawed character on all sides. There's a difference between a stroll in the foothills versus an attempt to summit K2 in sandals. Similarly, there are financial options that present reasonable rewards for reasonable risks, just as there are predatory practices. A perspective which will not admit to seeing a difference, has a blind spot which makes all journeys perilous. Bystanders who find themselves between the perspectives of Monk and the Captain of Industry in my example are well advised to recognize that striding blindly is a test of faith which is it's own reward. Successfully reaching the summit on those terms is mostly an unintended consequence. I believe that any effort to snuff out that faith is as mean-spirited as it is counter-productive. I think we should all strive to achieve our dreams, lest the boundaries of practicality define our potential. Human capital is precious, and dreams alone do not feed us. Being useful to others and grateful for opportunity has opened doors to expand my potential. People helped me along the way, so I try to help others to avoid paying tuition at the "School of Hard Knocks".
  12. twigg, I'm up in Loveland, and I too suffered from a lot of broken handles. I fixed a few causes which have dramatically increased my average handle lifespan. #1 I watched a youtube video of a hammer maker who's name currently escapes me. One of his teachings was to mark the handle to align with one end of the hammer head before trimming the handle to fit. Although they appear to be perfectly symmetrical, hammer head eyes are rarely perfect. That kept me from trimming the wrong side as I was fitting everything up. I could never figure out why the handles went from too big, to too small. I have found that a tight slip fit is absolutely essential to longevity. Too tight, or too loose won't work nearly so well, or for very long. I use cabinet card scrapers to shave the stock till it just slips through the hammer eye with a gentle tap. #2 I drill a small (1/8" or smaller) hole crosswise through the handle in line with where I want to put the wooden wedge. That prevents a stress riser from forming when the wedge is pushed in. I make sure that my wooden wedge is marked for full depth, but sufficiently long to allow it to project above the head for driving. #3 I set the handle into the head freehand. Putting the head on a bench or anvil to drive the handle in is how I ended up cocking the head, which invariably scars the handle inside the eye. Now, I hold the handle in my left hand and strike it with my right similar to how Japanese tanged knives are handled. #4 I take greater care to scale my wooden wedges to the task. They're just wide enough to span the kerf, and thick enough to fill the top of the hammer's head. The goal is for everything to fit without any gaps inside or out. #5 I make my own ring wedges. I buy 3/8" diameter tube stock that has a 1/8" wall thickness. Holding a long section of stock, I grind a 1/4" long taper around the circumference with my bench grinder or file. Then I use a hacksaw to cut it off square. An 18" length of the stuff makes an awful lot of handle wedges. Longer ovals like sledges can use two placed like a figure eight. #6 I've started using this swell locker stuff that hardware stores sell for fixing loose joints in chairs. It flows like superglue but it makes the wood expand before hardening in place. I got the idea from the hammer maker I mentioned in issue #1. #7 I apply Boiled Linseed Oil to all of my wood handled tools every fall. I coat the steel as well to provide rust protection
  13. Glenn, This is a great opportunity to demonstrate the difference between precision and accuracy. Precision is a measure of repeatability, accuracy is a measure of hitting the intended target. In this case, the intended target is to contrive an inexpensive way to approximate a set of kettle bells, presumably for strength training. Aside from competitions, or use in commerce, there is no reason to be concerned about how precisely the weights are labeled. If a given weight isn't suitable, the person using it goes up or down in their collection accordingly. The bucket allows this via adding or subtracting ballast which could take whatever form the user has at their disposal. Ten is a round figure which makes "bucket level" approximations simple. My point is that the pursuit of precision often works against accuracy. Lots of people can throw a random rock accurately. Sure, you could build anything from a trebuchet to a cannon to "fix" human error. None of them will be as accurate with a random rock as the person.
  14. Water weights roughly 10 lbs per gallon, most buckets come with handles oriented like kettle bells. Depending on how you're planning to use these things, a really good bucket or two could be your solution.
  15. Peter, One mental trap of blacksmithing is to think that all operations are best done hot with a hammer. If you put a convenience bend in the tips, you can clamp the bit of the tongs such that you can use a hacksaw to perfectly center a cut along the length of the bit. Once you've cut to the desired depth, you can heat the bit, and use a hardie to open the cut. It takes a bit of patience, but you can also take a bit of square stock, and cut it corner to corner to make yourself a triangular prism with 45/45/ 90 degree corners. Place the hypotenuse side on your anvil face, and use the 90 degree corner like it's an anvil "devil" against the aforementioned sawcut. That will give you a perfectly formed 90 degree corner on the inside of your bit. Depending on the size of the bit, and the state of your anvil corners, you might be able to use an anvil corner to open the sawcut and form the jaw as well. The saw cut creates a path of least resistance which will help to keep everything equal on both sides.
  16. JHCC, I believe culture is learned, so it seems to me that people wouldn't internalize guilt unless they were instructed (shamed) into feeling that way by the herd. From there, I think it's largely personal preference as to whether consequences are internal or public. Even in situations where the dominant doctrine is established as either internal or public, people will comply on their own terms.
  17. Your comment reminds me of an episode of "Parks and Recreation" where the laughingstock character Jerry was retiring. Tom was worried that he would become the new laughingstock so he tried to ridicule Andy. Andy laughed at the ridicule completely unperturbed. Donna commented to Tom that his gambit would fail because "Andy is a big dumb animal with no shame". To speak to your point, I think social contracts are enforced to the extent that the "pack" holds individuals accountable. This is likely why my dog looks ashamed when I scold him, but my neighbor's cat is defiant. Frosty, I think context affects the answer to your question. When both parties are guess culture, there is no cultural misunderstanding, so the accuracy of the guessing depends entirely on the social skills of the parties involved. As JHCC posted above, there are often "coded" messages in this culture that allow dignity in the overall interaction, regardless of whether a given party is satisfied by the outcome. I think the whole reason this matters is when Ask and Guess cultures interact because they are uniquely oriented to unintentionally offend one another. In my experience, most people in this situation have no idea that the other culture exists, so they're unusually certain that their opponent is hostile.
  18. Frosty, you've hit upon many of the features of Guess Culture that caused me to shift towards Ask Culture. When I was a teenager, I noticed that virtually all romantic comedy stories involved a common plot device. There would come points where one party has the opportunity to answer honestly to get what they want. That party never answers honestly until "it's too late", then they make a dramatic confession. I suspect that guess culture comes from courtly manners and etiquette rules like chivalry which prescribed the behaviors of both parties in an exchange such that you could ask a question, get an answer, and all sides would retain their dignity. I wonder if "Ask Culture" is a counter move against human nature's desire to game the social rules with evasive answers?
  19. I came across a really concise explanation of a common communication breakdown that directly affects business. I got it third or fourth hand so thanks to "Tangerine" for sharing your idea. "In some families , you grow up with the expectation that it's OK to ask for anything at all, but you've got to realize that you might get a no for an answer. This is the Ask Culture. In Guess Culture, you avoid putting a request into words unless you're pretty sure that the answer will be yes. Guess Culture depends on a tight net of shared expectations. A key skill is putting out delicate feelers. If you do this with enough subtlety, you won't even have to make the request directly; you'll get an offer. Even then, the offer may be genuine or Pro Forma; it takes yet more skill and delicacy to discern whether you should accept. If you're a Guess person, then unwelcome requests from an Ask person can seem presumptuous and out of line. You're more likely to feel angry, uncomfortable, and manipulated. If you're an Ask person, Guess behavior can seem inconsistent and rife with passive aggression." The original post goes on in greater detail, but these are the central points. Speaking for myself, I was raised in the Guess Culture. Any sort of negotiation, promotion, or coordination was as frustrating as it was time-consuming. There were a lot of default assumptions that made anything involving sales, settling disputes, or advertising very unappealing. The worst offenders were deemed "Cocky", or "Pushy". With the benefit of life experience, I can see why published prices, fixed pay scales, and "no-haggle" policies were to prolific in areas where guess culture was dominant. I recall how my on the job training emphasized the importance of customer complaints. They taught that only one in ten customers would actually communicate their issue, the other nine, would simply shop somewhere else. They also taught "aggressive hospitality" as a shoplifting countermeasure. Making eye contact and assertively asking if you could assist a suspected shoplifter was supposed to make the thief aware that they were noticed, hopefully causing them to abandon their criminal acts and leave. Sometime near adulthood I transitioned to Ask culture because I realized that outcomes mattered more than stated intentions. People were paying me to solve fairly simple problems for them, not to guess at who might voluntarily solve my problem for me, if only they came to know about it in the just-right way. That being said, I've retained the Guess culture skill set for situations where greater diplomacy is required. I see a lot of situations where the utility of one culture is used by the other. There are plenty of Ask Culture people who rely upon "Plausible deniability" and "My hands are tied" tactics when it's inconvenient to acknowledge a straightforward request. One of the more devious aspects of Guess culture is that it operates on the assumption that there is a correct guess. A vague, but artfully delivered request in that context can be so loaded with potential meaning that it presents a double-bind to the recipient. This practice is likely where the expression "It's better to ask forgiveness than permission" came from. At least in that scenario, you achieved something in exchange for your grief. Putting all of this into practical application, I think the most consistently successful approach to general/obvious requests is to clearly communicating your respect to the recipients position, and your desire to honor their decision without malice, before asking clearly and concisely. Guess people will probably still think you're rude, but the more sincerely helpful among them will offer some cultural guidance on how they'd like to hear future requests. Ask people may be initially cautious about the formality, but they generally appreciate the sentiment. Hopefully this helps you in your business.
  20. Twelve years ago I was and estimator for a General Contractor. We pursued a hard-bid project one time that attracted an incredible number of bidders in every trade. Placed in order from highest to lowest, there was a lot of obvious stratification. Companies with similar efficiency group together in a strata. Sometimes the efficiency is due to relative experience, other times the efficiency is due to relative ability. The difference between bidders in a strata was quite small, however the difference between strata could be pretty profound. Prior to that bid, my firm didn't know that any of the bidders in the two lowest bidding strata even existed. That was a huge eye-opener for me. Prior to that I simply assumed that my familiar contacts were market leaders for any opportunity I might choose to pursue. It takes a very significant investment to become a consistently profitable market leader against meaningful competition. Knowing what you're not good at is critical to avoiding squandering that investment.
  21. Today marks the second time in four days that I've received bid results where the low bidder was 33% lower than consensus. By way of providing context, over the last twelve years, my bids have won or lost by an average of 4%. In the case of projects worth 25% of my average annual revenue or more, that percentage shrinks to 0.5%. My personal best was winning a $1 Million bid by $2,000 which is 0.2%. Speaking in broad generalities, the market tightens in proportion to the requisite skill necessary to compete. Firms that lack the resources to perform/ undertake larger projects don't get as much practice bidding in tighter markets. With all that said, the first project I heard about was from a small general contractor (GC) that has always treated us fairly. The call was ridiculous. For starters, they tell me that my bid was 33% higher than their low bidder. They told me that the low bidder's proposal was "more detailed". I know the person calling me is intelligent and hard working. This leads me to conclude that they probably tried to match the items listed in my concise proposal against the low bidders verbose proposal. Since this person didn't have any questions or concerns about what was in my proposal, I concluded that they read, and understood what I wrote. This implies that the GC doesn't understand the "more detailed" proposal enough to match my project scope items in theirs. After a bit of hemming and hawing, the GC outright asks me what I think my competitor may have missed? "From what you've told me, it sounds like they're missing one third of the project" I replied. We exchanged pleasantries and that was the end of the conversation. Five hours later, this GC called me back to inform me that they'd followed up with the low bidder. Turns out the did have a mistake, which after corrections is now only slightly cheaper than my bid. Summing up, this GC told me that they would be using that number for their bid to the client. I'm sure this person felt they were doing the honorable thing by letting me know; a)that my bid wasn't crazy expensive, and b) that they would be hiring the lowest bidder. While I do appreciate the honesty, I think integrity without intelligence is a dubious virtue. My efforts defined the market value in concise terms that allowed them to be certain of what they were getting. My competitors bid was verbose enough that the GC could not tell that they had omitted one third of the project. The GC didn't mention anything about demanding unambiguous wording of my competitors proposal. So I suspect that their revised proposal is just as undecipherable to the GC as the first. If the cost difference is now slight, the difference in risk to the GC is certainly not. If you could pay a small premium to employ a firm that clearly has everything you care about, would you really take a chance on hiring a firm that presented a proposal so unintelligible that you couldn't tell that they missed one third of the job? The second project is actually even more ridiculous. There were twelve bidders, in two clusters, with one outlier. I was among the low cluster of five bidders with a range of 2% to our set. The outlier was 33% low. The GC figures that this bidder is just really hard up for work, so they're giving stuff away. As we talked, I mentioned that amount is perfectly equal to one notable, and absolutely necessary scope item. That item is so costly and necessary that I specifically provide a separate price for it on my proposal. Dead silence. When the conversation resumes, the GC tells me that it doesn't much matter since they lost their bid anyway. In fact, they're losing quite a bit. I commiserate with them and gently inform them that some of their GC competitors are notorious for exploiting bidder mistakes. As I hang up the phone, it strikes me that they're just adding everything up on my proposal without using the information I provided to inform their decisions. Perhaps even more significant is their lack of a grounding perspective. To many of these people, the risk of one versus the other is the monetary difference of their proposals. It's like they believe that they could hire the lower one, and pay no more than the bid day difference to cover mistakes. Precious little consideration is given to how that monetary difference factors in terms of the contractors survival. In both cases, the monetary difference is roughly equal to the low bidders best-case annual profit. This sets up a situation where it won't take much for a firm to enter a failure spiral. Replacing a contractor once the job is underway is catastrophically expensive. Pursuing the failed contractor for damages in the courts will inevitably reveal the bid-day difference. I suspect that someone in court will point to that 33% difference as a subtle indicator that something is amiss with the prosecutions judgement.
  22. Adding to Frosty, I would suggest that a flexible handle will also tend to make repeated blows harder since it dampens the hammer's bounce, as it inevitably alters the bounce path. Back when I was an apprentice, I knew a carpenter who was using a framing hammer made by Stanley that had a metal tuning fork design that was visible through whatever clear plastic stuff they made the handle out of. He swore up and down that it was noticeably better. At the time most rough framing carpenters went with a long handled and heavy (2 lbs) checker-face hammer. Recently, I was watching "Essential Craftsman" on youtube and he was talking about how his hammer choice evolved over time. Currently, his favorite is a 15 Oz Titanium hammer with a tool steel face from a company called "Stiletto tools". While it's tempting to obsess over kinetic energy calculations, I think that's looking at the wrong end of the handle in terms of work. The human effort involved is mostly in the post blow recovery. Any reaction forces that aren't in the direction you're lifting in will add work to the user.
  23. Chris, I have noticed that resource misalignment's are more common wherever competition and transparency are limited. I think it's critical to align incentives such that the wrong people find it profitable to do the right thing. This almost never happens because many people studiously avoid considering the complexity, and the potential, of their own nature. Consider the Pareto principal, which states that 80% of the consequences, come from 20% of the causes. On the one hand, every student who's ever done all the work for a group project knows something fundamental about human nature. On the other hand, it's like George Carlin once said "Everyone thinks of themselves as an excellent driver".
  24. If more people believed that, we'd have mandatory applicable skills testing for every job in society. Not just for the initial hire, but for continued employment. As a thought experiment, I think the only thing more disruptive than shedding incompetents from job ranks would be the incredible reckoning many industries would have about what they actually do. A few local contractors would probably have to change the wording on their job openings. Something like "...a criminal record is preferred, but not required."
  25. There seems to be a consensus that the qualifications to be an expert are secondary to short-term aesthetic utility. George, you brought up conveying credibility, which is a real problem in industries like mine where trade associations do nothing to police their ranks. The biggest estimators association in my area lists their canons of belief, including very explicit language against unethical bid practices. It seems to have escaped the leaderships notice that unethical estimators have no compunction about lying, especially when the lie conveys credibility. The local membership roster is peppered with unethical individuals I have first hand experience with. As I was thinking about that, it occurred to me that leadership in these associations might fear legal repercussions for expelling a dodgy member. Even if they had a strong evidence in support of their action, they might be concerned about the cost of an effective legal defense.
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