BIGGUNDOCTOR

The Jelly Belly Candy Co prides itself on making beautiful jelly beans, but we sold the irregular ones as Belly Flops. They were heavily discounted, you paid more for the perfect ones. I have also seen tires that were sold as blems due to cosmetic defects (the name didn't quite fill out in the mold, etc). If it is functional , sell it. One way to do this would be to have a friend take them to a gun show, and sell them with no provenance-from and estate sale, auction, whatever. Just don't have your maker mark on it, if it bothers you. There is time, and money tied up in that dead inventory, get some of it back. Blems don't bother me as long as the piece is functional, whatever it is. Like the one guy, there may be a customer looking for a good holster for a non traditional use, or really rough use, and doesn't want to mess up a really nice one. Bed holster, truck holster, who knows. With the tight economy everyone is looking to save a little, or make a little more. We can be our own worst critics. I have had people really go nuts over things that I thought were not so good. So, many people may think that your blems are perfect.

Go over to www.iforgeiron.com there are quite a few Brit smiths on there that may be able to help you out. Some are also on British Blades. There is a bladesmithing section on the IFI forum.

First thing that came to mind was a direct to garment printer. Seems if they can print pictures on a porous tee shirt ,leather would be a snap.

Yep, lasers are everywhere now. Do a search of the forums for laser, and see what pops up. I believe there was some Steampunk items that were done with a laser recently.

Well from the title of the post I would say make it anyway that you want. Who knows what they will be wearing in the 114th century

Interesting just about every one I have seen was nickel plated, could be a regional thing. As long as he doesn't take it in and out of the holster too much it will probably be OK. Value isn't going to be really high due to the fact that there are a lot of them still kicking around. It isn't like it is an early mint Colt SAA, but still worth keeping as nice as possible. I'd shoot it, since I shoot everything I own, no matter how pristine it is. No fun just looking at it. Nice job on the holster.

The reason I was asking about the spectrograph was I have a bunch of different bar stock that is unidentified as for what specific alloy it is. I had forgot about gtwister09's post.That will give you a good sampling for thicknesses.

If you don't have a good flash try setting a table lamp in front of it with the shade off. or use a drop light to illuminate the front. The picture is really dark, and fuzzy. With a light in the background the camera stops down, and gives you a darker picture.

.0625", and .090" this was measured at the thickest spot visible. Both blades have a full taper to the handle. This will probably vary depending on the size, and manufacturer. These two are 4.5", and 5" wide. If you are doing stock removal, O-1 would be easy to get, inexpensive, and will give a good edge. I used D-2 for die sets that I made because of its great wearing characteristics. I would think that most good steels like 5160, 52100, 1095, O-1, D-2 would make a good knife. If you forge one out the high carbon steels may be a better choice than an air hardening steel. On a side note, do you have access to a spectrograph?

I have a small Atlas bench lathe (approx 6"x18" that would do it, but shipping would be a killer. My small home shop lathe is an 18.5"x54" Monarch. Check Craigslist, I see lathes quite often here, even with Las Vegas being manufacturing poor. Once you have one you will wonder how you operated without one.

Pictures and a price for the whole thing may help. I always take in various orphans of all kinds that need some work, but the price has to be right. I would only part something out that was incomplete, or busted in some way that fixing would exceed buying another.

You made the right decision. All that you would have done was upped their profit margin to their customer. When I was working for an automotive lift company I made a service call to a dealership that we had done a lot of business with. When I got back I mentioned to the boss (another Ray) that Curly had a new lift. As soon as Ray heard that he got on the phone to the dealership. Turns out he had quoted that job, but they gave it to someone else because the install was less expensive. They were less expensive to install them, but they didn't service them afterwards, so they called us to do so. Ray told them that he was going to stop doing business with them, and they could find someone else to do their repairs, and servicing. For a small shop we traveled all over California, and into Nevada because we were factory authorized by a couple of the main manufacturers of lifts. My service area in California went up to the Redding/Red Bluff area ,and down to the Fresno/Los Banos areas. We were more expensive, but we did it all-a one stop shop doing lift installs, removals,repairs, and servicing of not only lifts but air compressors, lube pumps, hose reels, etc. Pricing is one area that I have always had a problem with, even when I had a machine and fab shop of my own. I NEVER charged enough. I found out how much less when I was working at the Jelly Belly Candy Company. The purchasing agent found out I used to have a shop, and asked me how much I would have charged to make a part for a machine. I looked at it, and told him I would have a hard time telling him $100, and it would be more like $60. It wasn't that complicated, and I figured it would take no more than an hour to do. Turns out that they just bought 20 of them for $300 each, because that was less than the factory price. So here I would have charged $1,200-$2,000, and the other guy got $6,000. I charged what I felt was a fair price, and I would have made a profit, just not as much profit. If they don't like your price, tough. Now if they become a good repeat customer, then you can consider doing them a favor once in awhile. Reward the loyal customers that you have, but charge shop rate for new ones. Great customer service is more valuable to some than a discounted price. I have since learned that I take my skills as a craftsman far too lightly. I look at some jobs as easy to do because of my skills, and tools. . People come to me because they cannot do something I can, or do not have the tools that I do. Yes , others can do what I can. Some are better than myself, but I am better than a lot of others too. Yes you lost a sale, but you gained some respect for yourself, and your skills. They lost more than you did, especially if word of this gets around to the other craftsmen.

Sounds like you need to keep your eye out for a small lathe. Where are you located?

Someday I want the click that has Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, etc. instead of numbers. Nice job.

Wunderbar! Did you make the knife too, or just the sheath?

A domed, or high compression piston with the valve cutouts would look cool for one of these. Do you trim the tops off of the piston, or us the whole thing? Nice job.

Driving home the other week I saw a deceased bovine out in the pasture being loaded up into the truck . They had it rigged up around the feet, and were hoisting it into the back. Curious why they drag them, when boom lifts, etc are available.

My Mom started leather working in the early 50's when Dad was stationed at F.E.Warren AFB in Cheyenne Wyoming. She was a great leather worker, and got me started when I was young. I ended up teaching the LW merit badge at a couple of BSA camps years later. I drifted away for a number of years, but recently got back into it.

Ran into Las Vegas today since it is windy, and rainy. Cruised over to see the newest addition to the Strip, the Cosmopolitan. One clothing store named Allsaints Spitalfields has tons of sewing machines in glass cases, and on the floor as displays. A sales gal told me that they have 1,800 in the store. The ones in the glass walls are home types of all makes, and on the floor I saw some monster Adlers, Singers, and other various other machinery for the garment industry of old. Sad to see welds on some of the machines to lawyer them up. For me the machines are more interesting than the $130 jeans If I get a chance I will go really late one night when the crowds are smaller, and take some pictures of the glass walls, and machines on the floor. I didn't see a model number on the one Adler, but it is huge.

I have a Dell that is older than yours, and I am also E-tarded. A friend replaced my hard drive with a larger one last year, and it was an off the shelf unit from Best Buy. I get that same screen, but it just reboots normally after a second, or two. Every computer I have owned has had a version of that screen show up as it checks the files on start up. With the new hard drive my friend installed a Linux based OS -Ubuntu. Runs great, and no problems with viruses. The Linux OS systems are customizable to what you want, and all of the software is free to download. You may want to check into it for yourself.

So, do your buds kid you about carrying a purse? Nice job, Dia de los Muertos right? It appears to be fairly small.

I will take a look. May take some time to dig all of the surplus tools out.

My best method for molding leather is to leave it in a damp place, works better during the winter For a lot of what you are looking to do you will be forming over some kind of a pattern. Be it a block of wood, a blue gun, or some other fashion of what you want to end up with for a shape. The leather is whetted enough get it pliable before forming to the pattern, then held there till it is dry. Forming the leather to the form can be done by hand, or mechanically with a vacuum unit. Lots of variations on these methods. I think if you do some searching using different terms you may find what you are looking for. Molding, forming, vacuum, etc........

There was a whole thread recently on VEGAN leather. A guy was looking to get naturally deceased leather because his girlfriend was a vegan. She was opposed to killing cows for food, and the leather made from them. But she was OK with leather made from a cow that had died naturally. Yes, I could see a market for this type of leather, as well as a higher market price. Do a little research and you can come up with quite a bit on vegan friendly items. They tend to lean towards cotton, hemp, wood, and other sustainable materials. There are some that advocate synthetics for shoes, clothing, etc due to their aversion to animals being used for food, or other products. I'll tell ya, after seeing a video of dogs, and other animals being skinned alive on Chinese fur farms ,I can see their point. Fur is one thing, and leather is another, since leather is a byproduct of the meat industry. Cows are not raised for just their hides. If a letter could be provided that could be photocopied showing the provenance of these hides, and I wanted to market to vegans, I would get some. As for the damage, a lot of vegans, as well as others interested in more organic items are not put off by an item not being perfect. Naturally grown, or formed items are seldom perfect like corporate factory items are. As a matter of fact it could be used as a marketing point; harvest markings for example. So, what does this all mean? You can buy the hides that Siegel has for sale, or you don't. No need to call his business dealings into question. As with any retail business you have to take some gambles as to what the customers will want to buy from you. This one didn't work out for him as well as he had hoped. No biggie, you cut your losses, and move on.