# Tales from the cabinet shop/wood shop.



## DS (Oct 10, 2011)

Anyone who does woodworking for a living surely has lots of interesting stories to tell.

I will start with a few of my own. Feel free to add yours and we can all benefit from each other's experiences.

First story:

"Captain Tacos"

Whenever I meet a new client for the first time, I try to make a point to learn their names.
It shows respect and personalizes the experience of designing custom cabinets and prevents embarrassment of a bad spelling or wrong name on dozens of pages of drawings and contracts.

So, this new client had a name that was Greek to me, which made perfect sense, because in fact, he was Greek.

All I remember of his last name was that it started with the letter K, had far too many vowels and strange letters in it and did not sound anything like it was spelled. 
The client pronounced it the way you might say "Captain Tacos" if you removed all the letter T's. 
This is wrong, but it is something like "Kapenacos" (sp).

We designed a household of custom cabinets for this wonderfully Greek client and when the paperwork hit the shop, all kinds of interesting pronunciations came forth when attempting to talk about this job.

As I explained it to you, is how I explained it to the shop foreman - Captain Tacos without the T's.
Before long though, everyone in the shop was working on and talking about the "Captain Tacos" job.

As is often customary on a large custom job, periodic shop tours to verify progress for bank draws, etc, are a common occurrence.

On this day, it was Mr. Kapenacos' turn to tour the shop, see our progress on his build, and meet some of the craftsmen working on his project.

Even though the shop foreman knew how to pronounce "Kapenacos"(sp), they had been saying "Captain Tacos" so much in the shop, that he slipped and called the client Captain Tacos to his face! 
I almost died!

Fortunately, Mr. Kapenacos has been dealing with the name problem most of his life and was entirely amused with this "Americanism" of his name.

What a relief, as I feared it might have gone entirely in a different direction.


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## SMP (Aug 29, 2018)

I think I remember him from Full House


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## pottz (Sep 15, 2015)

thats funny ds,ive had the same problem my whole life,ive only had a handful of people ever pronounce mine correct.


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## DS (Oct 10, 2011)

Next story:

"Refried beans"

Back in 1998, my boss asked me to evaluate a business plan proposal for a new custom cabinet shop. 
At the time, we were designing, selling and installing semi-custom modular cabinetry and contracting custom cabinets from a local custom shop.

The boss wanted to bring the full custom work in house and had the budget to do it.

Opening a new custom wood shop from scratch is a daunting task. 
Most shops start with a couple of guys working out of a small rental space with basic tools and they organically build the operation up over several years.

We started with nothing but a business plan and a budget.
We bought an empty building, outfitted it with electricity, compressed air and dust collection.
Then, we filled it with new state of the art CNC machinery, workstations and finishing equipment.
We hired analysts to evaluate our shop work flow for bottlenecks and inefficiencies.

Our help wanted ad hit the local papers the day we officially hung out the shingle.

Amazingly, there was a line of about 35 candidates lined up at our door within minutes of opening.

It didn't take long for us to figure out why we had such a line at our front door that morning, as not one person in line had any real woodworking experience.

As it turns out, we opened our new shop in the post NAFTA trade agreement era when companies were moving south from Arizona in record numbers where there was a more favorable business regulatory environment. 
(Insert loud sucking noise here)

Our new building shared a rear property line with the Rosarita refried bean factory, which, coincidentally had opened a new factory in Mexico and closed its USA factory doors just the day before.

The only "woodworking" experience that any of the barely English speaking candidates had was packing cans of refried beans into cardboard boxes and loading trucks with a forklift.

In the end, it took nearly two years before we comfortably filled all of our key positions in the shop,with adequately experienced people.

We actually hired several of the bean packers and a few of them took the challenge seriously to learn the woodworking business and they became some of our best and most loyal people.

I have to say that when we started out with a handful of pages of a business plan, we had little idea that our biggest challenge would be to hire and train a qualified staff of reliable workers.


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## DS (Oct 10, 2011)

More to come… goodnight for now.


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## DS (Oct 10, 2011)

> I think I remember him from Full House
> 
> - SMP


Was there a Mr. Kapenacos on full house? I didn't really watch that show.


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## DS (Oct 10, 2011)

"Murphy wins again"

I had just finished all the paperwork to put a job into production. Seven complete copies were made so that each department could have their own set to work with.

I had just gotten back from distributing those copies when my phone rang. It was the client.
"I think we are going to change our minds again about the color, is it too late?"

No, it was not too late. I just had to retrieve all of the paperwork I just distributed and change the color.

I was very meticulous that the old color didn't even appear on a page crossed out. I made all new paperwork and redistributed it.

A couple of weeks go by and the job is done, sitting on the loading dock, when the QA guy, (every shop should have one) comes into my office and pronounces, "It's the wrong color!"

I go back to the dock and sure enough, it's the old color selection from just before that phone call.

So I track down the lead finisher who prepares the colors and ask him, "Where did you get this color? It's not anywhere on your paperwork."

He walks me back to my office and points to a white board where I was keeping track of the jobs in progress as they go through the shop. Sure enough, written in dry erase marker is the old color.

Unbeknownst to me, the finisher was ignoring his paperwork and was coming into my office to see the colors on my whiteboard because it was "easier".
Never mind that there are seven copies with who knows how many notations of the correct color, no one looked at it until it was ready to ship out the door.

Bad information is like a virus.

Unfortunately, the old color was very dark and the new color was fairly light, so we couldn't' even salvage the job.
We offered to discount the darker cabinets, but the client wouldn't have it.

We ended up eating the entire job and ended up remaking the whole thing.

Freakin' Murphy's law wins again.


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## Unknowncraftsman (Jun 23, 2013)

I once found a mouse nest with short pencils. Apparently the mouse thief was taking them off my bench at night.
I do remember feeling uneasy about never having short pencils. Relieved to find the nest

I once turned around to find some guy standing in my shop that was fleeing the police. I quickly let him out the gate before my dog figured out we have a intruder. The police took him down in the street in front of the shop.


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## Foghorn (Jan 30, 2020)

> "Murphy wins again"
> 
> I had just finished all the paperwork to put a job into production. Seven complete copies were made so that each department could have their own set to work with.
> 
> ...


One of those spec jobs. Did you end up selling the original run?


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## pottz (Sep 15, 2015)

> I once found a mouse nest with short pencils. Apparently the mouse thief was taking them off my bench at night.
> I do remember feeling uneasy about never having short pencils. Relieved to find the nest
> 
> I once turned around to find some guy standing in my shop that was fleeing the police. I quickly let him out the gate before my dog figured out we have a intruder. The police took him down in the street in front of the shop.
> ...


i hear ya,once i was in the shop,garage,.and the roll up was up and this young guy came barging in the door,asking what time it was? i had my hand on my hammer on my belt ready for whatever his intentions were and i said it's .. then i said dont ever do that to someone again because the result may not be as easy as you just recieved!


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## DS (Oct 10, 2011)

> One of those spec jobs. Did you end up selling the original run?
> 
> - Foghorn


I am fairly certain they were sold for salvage to a dealer who regularly bought our screw-ups.
We didn't have the space to store much else outside our normal production runs.

We were able to reuse drawer boxes, guides and hinges as well as any specialty hardware like pullouts and lazy susans.

Still, that was about $25k down the hole…


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## LeeRoyMan (Feb 23, 2019)

A little bit different kind of story, but one I always remember.
This is about the bravery of 1st Responders

I first started working in a production cabinet shop (1977)
As to the size, they did about 5 full kitchens a day. Assembly dept, Door dept, sanding dept, finish dept, etc etc…

I worked the nail bench, building boxes which was next to the finish department. The finish department had a rotating line, you put the cabinet on the line, it would go through several stations and come off the line ready to hang doors and drawers.

I always heard the stories that if the finish department caught fire there would be an explosion and the percussion would pretty much blow you right through a brick wall. Well, one day smoke started coming out of the finish area. Everyone evacuated the shop.

By the time the fire department got there, black smoke was billowing out the big roll up door like the whole building was fully engulfed. I just kept waiting for the explosion any second.

Those firemen marched right into the building like it was just another day. After about 5 minutes they came out dragging a 55 gallon can full of dirty stain rags smoking like a chimney.

So no explosion, but a testament to the bravery of those guys and what they do everyday. 
Hats off to 1st responders.


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## DS (Oct 10, 2011)

It can sure be scary when it seems everything is going up in flames.

It takes a special breed to be a fire fighter.


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## DS (Oct 10, 2011)

"Cat trap"

One day we got a call from a customer saying she needed us to go out and repair her cabinets.

She had an L shaped kitchen and, against my advice, placed a double oven in the corner on an angle.
This design wasted a lot of space behind the oven and made the ovens dominate the room aesthetically.

When we got there to see what needed repairing, there was a huge hole "chopped" out of the finished end panel at the side of the oven cabinet.

It seems the cat had climbed up on top of the oven cabinet and either fell, or jumped into one of the triangular voids behind the oven. 
When the cat couldn't get out it complained loudly.

It took the homeowner some time to figure out where the cat was, but, once located, they quickly determined there was no easy way to get it out.

So, they called the fire department, who as you know, likes to extract things with axes.

We ended repairing the end panel and covering all the voided corners at the top of the oven cabinet .

Now we have a policy: Don't design cat traps.


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## BillWhite (Jul 23, 2007)

And there's the plumber who put the drain in the slab in the wrong place. SOOOOO the island sink would not work. Job super said "Don't worry. We'll fix it." Guess that he jack hammered the slab to move the drain.
Just glad I hadn't measured wrong. (I've never done that…...hmmmm).


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## DS (Oct 10, 2011)

It seems anymore that builders get it somewhere close to the island and just plan on moving the island plumbing each time. 
Or, are least it seems that way.

Sometimes they get lucky and it lands where it shows on the plans.


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## bigblockyeti (Sep 9, 2013)

> So I track down the lead finisher who prepares the colors and ask him, "Where did you get this color? It's not anywhere on your paperwork."
> 
> He walks me back to my office and points to a white board where I was keeping track of the jobs in progress as they go through the shop. Sure enough, written in dry erase marker is the old color.
> 
> - DS


Part of QA is confirming SOP is being followed. It sounds like in your instance it was more of an HR function if an SOP was in place. ISO 9001 implementation should have prevented that.


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## DS (Oct 10, 2011)

> So I track down the lead finisher who prepares the colors and ask him, "Where did you get this color? It's not anywhere on your paperwork."
> 
> He walks me back to my office and points to a white board where I was keeping track of the jobs in progress as they go through the shop. Sure enough, written in dry erase marker is the old color.
> 
> ...


Yeh, you're right, but, we weren't that sophisticated yet… Hindsight and all that.


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## MadMark (Jun 3, 2014)

Was finishing customers attic. We'd put the insulation in with the side tabs stapled on the edges of the rafters so the sheetrock would form a seal - all per code.

We come in the next day and notice that the insulation had been removed and reinserted with the tabs on sides of the rafters. This left gaps between the edges of the insulation and the rafters and pushed the insulation tighter to the sheathing increasing air leakage and reducing the insulation efficiency.

Cust had "corrected" our "mistake" and redid it the way he'd seen a *union* crew do it.

We left it alone.


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## DS (Oct 10, 2011)

Insulation is a tough job. I try to avoid it at all costs.
Itchy, itchy, itchy!

Funny how the client was so invested in doing it the wrong way that they even got close to the itchy-ness(sp?) that is insulation.

If I thought it was wrong, I'd be like, hey, fix it! 
Then you could tell me it is code and I'd be like, really? Okay.

I'm not touching it.


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## JAAune (Jan 22, 2012)

Sometimes it's better to be lucky than good.

I launched my business in 2012 and the local economy was still in recovery mode. So when my business partner landed a custom bookcase job from a family friend that was good. When that project was upgraded into curved face frames, built-in LED lighting and a price tag that left us a reasonable profit margin, that was great. Getting a showpiece in the portfolio and getting paid to do so is a huge boost for a newly-formed custom woodshop.

A word of advice for future business owners: standardize your written communication and sketching methodology with your business partner before tackling a big project.

So my business partner does the field measure while I work on the 3D sketches. Eventually, the client approves a design and I create a complete 3d model, CAD files for the new CNC and working drawings for the shop. Everything is drawn up perfectly and goes together exactly as planned. Curved doors from Walzcraft match our steam-bent face frames. The CNC does a great job creating curved crown moldings. The client's electrician installs a switched outlet and gets it in exactly the right location.

On install day we loaded up our tools, the two curved side cases and the three bookshelf units and got everything unloaded at the client's home.

Here's the finished project.










Anyone guess what's wrong with that picture?

"On install day we loaded up our tools, the two curved side cases and the three bookshelf units…"

Somehow my business partner and I managed to arrive at different dimensions between what he sketched and what I drafted on the computer. So on that first install day, there was a gaping hole in the middle of the bookshelves. After wasting time trying to figure out where we had messed up, we realized the hole was exactly the size of a bookcase unit. A few apologies later and a promise to return soon with an extra bookcase, we left to go build a 4th bookshelf unit.

By the time we setup to build a duplicate bookcase and purchased another very expensive LED fixture, the profit margin was shot. But we did get a very happy client. The 4th unit slid into place with barely a 1/16" to spare and the finished project shows no sign of any mistakes.

I'm not saying it can never happen but since that day, my company has never messed up another field measure.


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## wildwoodbybrianjohns (Aug 22, 2019)

I have worked in numerous cabinet shops, from a Dad N Son operation (where I learned the ropes), to very high end furniture. I have about 90 or so computer work-stations that used to be in the World trade Center to my credit, as one example. I was also part of the Team that built the handrail (very complicated) that circumnavigated the Commodities Trading Floor in the World Trade Center.

Anyway, I was in need of work, and there was a new Korean outfit in town so I applied there. This was before Ikea worldwide, and just about when Asian operators took over the US market. I got the job, maybe 8bucks an hour, somethin like that. All the stock came prefab from Korea, our job was to assemble it in a production line. Just screws, no glue. There were about 4 caucasians, the rest Koreans. I got teamed up with their fastest guy at the top of the line assembling the carcasses. Working as a unit like that, two guys can be quite fast, you spur eachother on. Him and I were doing about 90 cabs a day; the other guys fit the hardware and such. One day we see "experts" come in to assess the Line. 90 cabs a day wasnt good enough. The Line was re-worked to maximize production. Afterward, me and my partner were pushing out around 120 cabs per day, and we were hustling. That still wasnt good enough. I quit when I was told I needed to be faster yet.


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## DS (Oct 10, 2011)

"Green frog"

When you work in the office of a cabinet shop, you look out for signs that things are going wrong in the shop.

A loud bang, the ring of a saw blade after a kickback, the whine of an overtaxed router motor, or the shouting of employees will really get your attention.

This one day, there was quite a ruckus in the shop and I went to investigate. 
I encountered one of our younger workers with blood running down the side of his head.

Across the shop was one of our older workers being restrained by his coworkers. He was furiously shouting (in Spanish) at the young kid and was attempting to get free from his coworkers to finish his assault.

The older fellow had apparently struck the kid in the head with a hammer.

The situation calmed down and we tried to assess what happened and why.

Apparently, the kid had hurled a verbal insult at the old man which set him off into a rage.

Now, I know there are cultural differences between myself and these two men, but, to this day, I don't understand how this was insulting.

What did he say to set him off?

He called him a "Green frog".

Does that have any special significance in Spanish?
I still don't know, but the kid was lucky he dodged the hammer just enough that it was a glancing blow to the head instead of a direct shot.

He declined to press charges and the police were not called.
They surprisingly got along pretty well after that too.

Like I said, there are cultural differences that I might never understand.


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## wildwoodbybrianjohns (Aug 22, 2019)

There is a very famous restaurant in Mexico called La Rana Verde, but that wouldnt be an insult. Likely, the young guy was calling the older one a reptile that crawls in the mud, or something like that.


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## CaptainKlutz (Apr 23, 2014)

> "Green frog" ….. - DS


 Thanks for laugh. I think I know why they started fighting?

Language is funny thing. Especially the translation of idioms and colloquialism. Would love to know the actual phrase used. Was it simply 'rana verde' (green frog)?

Rana 'Frog' or las Ranas 'Frogs' is used in many colloquial meanings. 
Usually meant as slang for 'farm animal' or worse 'dirty slimy animal'.

'cuando las ranas críen pelo' translates into 'when frogs grow hair '
but really meant as the idiom insult; 'when pigs learn to fly', or 'when cows come home'

'salió rana' translates into 'frog come out'
but usually means; 'was a big disappointment' 
or I was told once, polite way to say 'useless pile of excrement'

Making things even more difficult; Many regions of Mexico and S. America have old indigenous languages, with mashup of Portuguese and Sanskrit influences. Where 'rana' (frog?) can also be used to mean war or battle.

FWIW - Worked setting up Mexico mfg operations off/on for couple decades of my career, and ran across all kinds of strange slang insults, often directed towards this Klutz ******************************. Have not visited for many years now, so my Spanglish to Mexican slang is muy malo, or very bad. 
But I could easily see something like 'rana verde' (green frog) being used to mean; 
'illegal immigrant (green card holding) slimy stinky farm animal'; or some other nefarious insult. LOL

Cheers!


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## DS (Oct 10, 2011)

> Sometimes it s better to be lucky than good.
> 
> I launched my business in 2012 and the local economy was still in recovery mode. So when my business partner landed a custom bookcase job from a family friend that was good. When that project was upgraded into curved face frames, built-in LED lighting and a price tag that left us a reasonable profit margin, that was great. Getting a showpiece in the portfolio and getting paid to do so is a huge boost for a newly-formed custom woodshop.
> 
> ...


I have a tendency to spend a lot of energy calculating radii and complicated geometry perfectly, only to mess up simple addition and subtraction.

You were fortunate to have a good fix for this one. Sometimes, I am not so lucky.

It looks real nice, btw. Circles are fun.


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## DS (Oct 10, 2011)

"Installation cat-astrophe"

This happened waaay back in 1986.
I was fairly new in the business and was working as a sawyer in a decent sized shop.

We were a shop that was wholly owned by a construction company that built retirement communities.

The floor plans were fairly simple and we could bang out maybe two homes a day out of this shop.

Our installer had to hang an upper peninsula cabinet that had glass panel doors front and back.
He measured meticulously for the joists and hung his cabinet - driving all the screws home snuggly.

Unfortunately, his cabinet was shifted off the wall about 3/4" when he raised it. So instead of driving the screws dead center of the joist, the screws skimmed the edges just enough to sink the screws but not enough to have any real strength.

It didn't help matters that when the new homeowner moved in, they loaded up the cabinet with hundreds of pounds of heirloom China.

Predictably, the entire upper run of cabinets came crashing down and punched a rectangular hole through the laminate countertop and plummeted deep into the base cabinets.

The precious China was destroyed. 
It took quite an effort to replace it.

But that isn't even the worst part of this story - Her cat was on the countertop and perished in the rubble.

It didn't seem like just compensation, but, we gave her a gift certificate to adopt another cat.

What can you do about that?

RIP Fluffy.


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## DS (Oct 10, 2011)

> "Green frog" ….. - DS Thanks for laugh. I think I know why they started fighting?
> 
> Language is funny thing. Especially the translation of idioms and colloquialism. Would love to know the actual phrase used. Was it simply rana verde (green frog)?
> 
> ...


I'm sure you're on the right track here.

And since I heard the translation through a third party coworker, I'm sure there were a lot of details left out.


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## DS (Oct 10, 2011)

"Nailer wars"

When I first started building cabinets back in the mid-eighties, I was employed as a Sawyer which was a dirty job and a lot of hard work.
I was cutting between 70 to 80 sheets of plywood every single day. (No CNC's back then either)

After a while, I "graduated" to hardware installation. 
This was not a very desired position as it was very monotonous.
Hundreds of old style Amerock hinges and guides a day gets old pretty quick. 
Nowadays, the CNC precision drills your mounting holes and you attach the base plates and guides before assembling the box. 
Things were decidedly more manual in those days.

This lasted for three or four months and it was decided that I could become an assembler.

Being an assembler was considered one of the top positions in the shop and I was good at it.
I really enjoyed being an assembler as I got to see the final results of our labors come to fruition on my table.

Very shortly after becoming an assembler I was working away and felt a sting on my leg. 
I looked over and saw that I was being shot at with a nailer by my coworker. 
Apparently, this was a thing and this was my initiation. 
Pretty soon I was been bombarded with 18 gauge staples from both sides by my coworkers.

Welcome to the assembly area I guess.

Every now and then, when the guys got bored towards the end of the day, someone would start with the nailers and it was a free for all.

I was the young new kid and eager to fit in, so I just went with it..
I'm sure it was not OSHA approved and was a huge waste of company resources, but, oddly, no one was ever called out on it.

Looking back, I now have a slightly different perspective on things.

A few months into that position, a coworker managed to pin three of his fingers together with a 2" brad nail.
He brought the X-ray in to show us.

That really made an impression on me.

FWIW, Never hold a board right next to where you are getting ready to nail. 
Just trust me on this one.


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## MadMark (Jun 3, 2014)

We did the same sort of idiot games with a 5/4 square roofing stapler.

Not only did we shoot at each other across the roof, but after breaks we'd shoot all the 1/2 empty styrofoam coffee cups off the edge of the roof.

Never saw one thru the hand but we had a guy nail his foot to the floor with a 10p framing nailer. Fortunately it only caught the boot.

OSHA? We don't need no steenk'in OSHA! (apologies to John Ford)


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## LeeRoyMan (Feb 23, 2019)

I kinda had the same start as you. 
When I got hired at the production cabinet shop I wrote about earlier, I started in the sanding department.
After about a week I got moved to the assembly area, we called it the nail bench. 
3 people worked the bench. (Sometimes 2 when they were caught up or if someone called in.)
One (Head Nailer) nailed boxes, the second put on frames and the third put in the tie down cleats and the toe kicks then they were sent to the sanding department.
I worked night shift (4 to midnight). 
One day I came in at 4 and they were carrying out the head nailer. Apparently he was using his knee to line up a face frame and the gun slipped off the frame as he was shooting. Nail went right into his knee cap. 
Locked him up good. Ouch!

On another note, 
I never could figure out why they hired new people into the sanding department (with no experience.) 
We were always having to redo putty marks, scratches, replace face frames because they couldn't flush rout the sides, etc… Prep leads to quality and new sanders couldn't prep worth beans.

I always told my foreman they need to pay sanders better and keep them there. 
But I was only 18….nobody listened..


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## Tony1212 (Aug 26, 2013)

> "Nailer wars"
> 
> When I first started building cabinets back in the mid-eighties, I was employed as a Sawyer which was a dirty job and a lot of hard work.
> I was cutting between 70 to 80 sheets of plywood every single day. (No CNC's back then either)
> ...


When I was in high school, I worked at an ACE Hardware store. Since I already had a maker background, I would cover for the guys in the cutting room (cutting glass, keys, pipe, etc…). One of the cashiers would cut up paper clips and use a rubber band between his pointer and thumb as a sling shot and would launch paper clips at me.

Took me a while to figure out where these were coming from, but once I did… Well, let's just say the cutting room had about one of every tool in the store and bunch of scrap pieces of wood and plexiglass. One day he launched a paper clip at me and I retaliated with a broadside. I had about 7 or 8 contraptions ready to go and could be reloaded pretty quickly.

Needless to say, I had never had the chance to try them out, so my aim was way off. It was springtime and we had a Scott's Fertilizer display between me and the cashier. Their big marketing display was a large inflatable copy of their fertilizer bags.

By the time our little war had ended, that display was a just a sad limp mess.

BTW, this was all in good, rambunctious fun. There was no malice between me and the cashier. And we only did it on slow nights when there were no customers around.


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## DS (Oct 10, 2011)

"Best laid plans"

At times, a project which is fairly technical can get derailed by the simplest of things.

This time was the first time I had used a CNC to make an arched crown molding.
Usually, this might be some sort of pediment type structure whose actual radius is semi-arbitrary and not hyper critical.

In this instance, there was a 14 foot wide arched niche that the client wanted eight glass paneled doors with 4" crown molding sandwiched perfectly between the doors and the curved soffit.

The reason that this is more critical is that each element's curved component needs to be concentric to all the other curved components or it would not look right - this included the drywall arch which we had to match perfectly.
You cannot adjust concentric components up or down without creating a crescent or an inverted crescent shape. 
There is very little or no room for error.

At the time we were operating with a CNC door shaper which made the doors about as simple as they could be. Even then, there were four unique programs required - eight doors total with four lefts and four rights sharing mirrored geometry.

The cabinets were overlay face frame style and the span was split into two cabinets - each a mirror of the other.
The height at the peak of the arched uppers was right at 48" and about 27" tall at each end. 
The arched cabinet face frames, likewise, presented little challenge.

Making the crown molding, however, proved to be more difficult.
We didn't have a molder which could run the profile on a curve, (likely the easiest way to make this), but we did have the CNC router. 
The problem was that I hadn't ever run grouped cutting knowledge before and I had to manually run all my tool paths simply because I didn't know any better at the time.

Long story short, I spent a full week coding for this one upper run of cabinets and crown.

Amazingly, the build went super fast once it got to production. The cabinets turned out great!

I called the installers in for a hand-off meeting to go over the complexities of concentric geometry.
It eluded them as to how, if they raised the cabinets 1/2", the center space and the end spaces would not both adjust by 1/2". The resulting crescent shape, due to the different angles from the center wasn't anything they had to deal with before. Finally, I was able to prove the earth was round, I mean, demonstrate this effect, and they were good to go.

This is where things went sideways.

On the day of installation, the two installers I met with were delayed on a different project, so the installation manager called up two other guys to go install the project. (We had 35 installers on the payroll at the time, running about 3400 installations annually)

This, on its own, might had been okay, but those two installers were arriving separately from job sites at the opposite ends of the Metro Phoenix area. One guy would arrive about 45 minutes before the other guy.

Not content to sit around waiting for his companion, and full of the "I can do this myself" machismo, the installer made some support sticks and hefted the first 7 foot wide, 4 foot tall cabinet onto the wall by himself.
At first, it seemed that it was going to be okay. But as he tried to adjust the cabinet's position before driving the first screw, he lost control and the cabinet came crashing down, shattering into splinters.

When I first got the call that the left half the cabinet run was destroyed, I was devastated. 
I knew it had gone too perfectly up to that point. (Stinking Murphy's law strikes again, right?)

As it turned out, we were able to quickly make a replacement cabinet by rerunning the programs and got back to the job site within a couple of days - Which, is more than we could say for the installer, who was out for 6 to 8 weeks with a fractured arm from when the cabinet fell on top of him.

I would never wish ill of anybody, but part of me feels slightly vindicated.

BTW, the originally scheduled installers who got the briefing actually got to do the installation on the second attempt.

That home was eventually sold to a retired MLB team coach who remodeled the house and added tons more millwork before ever moving In.


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## DS (Oct 10, 2011)

> I never could figure out why they hired new people into the sanding department (with no experience.)
> We were always having to redo putty marks, scratches, replace face frames because they couldn t flush rout the sides, etc… Prep leads to quality and new sanders couldn t prep worth beans.
> 
> I always told my foreman they need to pay sanders better and keep them there.
> ...


Yeh, not many people enjoy sanding, so it gets pawned off on the new guy.
I've got a story about that which I'll put together soon.


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## DS (Oct 10, 2011)

"The Dough-master"

Remember the Bean packers from an earlier story?
Well, as it turns out they happen to know a lot of good loyal hard workers who are immigrating to this country (legally, of course)
One such fellow was in his mid-thirties and was saving to bring his family over from Argentina.

As someone with no cabinetry experience often does, he started in the sanding department.
Things had been a mess there for a while as we were still trying to fill key positions in the newly formed company.

At some point, a Kingsport sandpaper representative paid us a call and we reached out to him for guidance to get our processes down as it pertained to all things sanding.

He had quite a bit of experience with this subject (something I am discovering is fairly atypical for many industry reps) and he offered to hold a sanding seminar for our company if we agreed to throw out all the useless hodgepodge of papers and sanders we had at the time and use Kingsport exclusively. (An informal agreement)

We all learned a lot about sanding that day of the seminar. We got all new ROS sanders and hook it pads, downdraft tables, proper lighting, and a consistent stock of all the correct disks for our application. 
As it turns out we were over sanding a lot and wasting time, energy, resources and product quality from sanding inefficiently.

Our fellow from Argentina soaked up this training and quickly stood out with his excellent and efficient work.
It was about that time that we learned that he had two jobs. 
He was working a night shift for Papa Johns making pizza dough, then coming to work for us at 6am for another full shift everyday.

Well, we decided he would be perfect as our sanding department lead and brought him in to the office to make him a proposal.

We explained our offer to promote him and give him a significant raise, but, we insisted he quit his other job.
At first he resisted the notion of quitting his other job until we pointed out that he would be making more money by working this one shift than he was currently earning by working two shifts.

You could see the light bulb go on once he realized the full extent of our offer.

The sanding department was in tip-top shape from that day on all thanks to the Dough-master from Argentina.


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## DS (Oct 10, 2011)

"Dude! You almost just got shot!"

I was working building commercial millwork for a builder/architect early in my career and got to do lots of interesting projects from building restaurants, to restoring a Frank Lloyd Wright house complete with new furniture I got to build from original plans.

This particular day, though, we were refacing an IGA supermarket in Phoenix, Az.

We had prefabricated wooden bump outs which we were attaching to the face of the building. 
After being stuccoed, they would form the framework for a new awning across the front of the store.

Installing the bump outs was a two man job, as one person had to be on the roof anchoring the top of the bump out and the other would be on the sidewalk anchoring the bottom.

The store's building extended down one side with several smaller stores in it and so it was pretty big.
After a long, tedious day working in the Phoenix sun, it felt like half a mile long, but was probably less than 500 feet.

We got an early start and by noon, we had worked our way right next to the main entryway. 
I was working the bottom and using a 0.22 caliber Ramset to drive anchoring nails into the concrete.

About that moment, my partner on the roof starts laughing uncontrollably.

I asked him why he was laughing and he said, "Dude! You almost just got shot!"

Unbeknownst to me, an armored car had arrived and pulled directly behind me on the curb to collect the days receipts. The driver had just exited the store with bags of money when, BANG! My Ramset fired my nails.

The rent a cop dropped his bags and drew his service weapon at my back all without me being aware he was even there.

Thankfully, I never saw him with his weapon drawn, or, I would've been a complete wreck. 
(Though not as much of a wreck than if he had not managed enough self control to realize he was not in any eminent danger.)

My other coworkers all teased me about it mercilessly after my coworker described, in great hilarious detail, what he saw from his birds-eye-view perch on top of the roof.

I was just glad nothing worse happened.


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## DS (Oct 10, 2011)

If you are enjoying these stories and want me to continue, please let me know.
Also, feel free to chime in with your own experiences so we can all share in them.

If this turns into a monologue, I feel it will far less interesting than if we all share our stories.
Please comment below. Thanks!


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## CaptainKlutz (Apr 23, 2014)

LOL, I like it.

Have a couple WW related business stories, but not from a cabinet shop or WW business perspective. 
Mine professional efforts are from electronics world, where my WW knowledge and hobby translated into brief opportunities to work wood at my day job. 
The rest of my WW business stories are family commission projects, where I would embarrass a family member, if I posted them; and best left off-line.

Will try post something will get I some time.

Cheers!


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## MadMark (Jun 3, 2014)

Here's one from my PC service days:

Cust comes in saying his new system floppy "won't boot". This in the black 360kb 5-1/4" floppy days.

Cust is holding flat brown donut by the edges. When he read "Remove diskette from outer protective jacket." he took it to mean cut the *black* diskette frame off.

I had to fall back into the lab to keep from busting out in his face. Grabbing a spare boot disk I returned to the front and showed him how to remove the disk from the paper sleeve.

Looking sheepish he muttered something about how it gave him a "hell of'a fight" to get it apart …


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## DS (Oct 10, 2011)

> Here s one from my PC service days:
> 
> Cust comes in saying his new system floppy "won t boot". This in the black 360kb 5-1/4" floppy days.
> 
> ...


Reminds me of a tech support story where the customer claimed his cup holder stopped working…
Turns out the CD tray wasn't designed to hold drinks.


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## DS (Oct 10, 2011)

P.s. I just noticed that, in the dough-master story, the word Klingspor got autocorrected to Kingsport.
Just in case anyone was wondering who Kingsport sandpaper is… lol.

Btw. Where I am working now, a Klingspor rep recently cold called on us and I asked him what he could do to straighten out our sanding department. (We are over sanding horribly these days and I can't seem to get any traction trying to change anyone's mind about it)

He looked at me like I was from another planet. 
Turns out we had just gotten a really good salesman/craftsman the time before.

Even though this guy would make lots of sandpaper sales by doing it, he didn't have the knowledge and experience to do what I inquired about.
YMMV


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## Knockonit (Nov 5, 2017)

lol, i'm in construction biz, and not like the old days when the salesman or woman, had some actual experience with their product, now they watch a vid and know it all, bummer, as i'd really like to learn about some of the new products on market by word of mouth in lieu of a video and some third party experiencer.

the const. biz is full of horror and funny stories, after 55 years in it, i oughta write a book
Rj in az


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## MadMark (Jun 3, 2014)

I was about 15 and my cousin Ross was about 17. We were installing a tile floor with that nasty mastic. It was almost noon when Ross asked what would remove the mastic and we gave him a can of MEK (Methyl Ethyl Ketone - nastier than the mastic).

We go to lunch and Ross is squirming and can't sit still. We asked what the problem was and he told us he'd taken a pee break and had gotten mastic on himself. When he used the MEK to wash it off his, err, dangly bits, he'd managed to get quite the chemical burn.

We told him to go into the gents and wash it off. It felt so good he didn't come back for half an hour!

I can only imagine the sight that presented itself to anyone else that used the facilities while he was "scrubbing" ...


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## PCDub (Sep 24, 2017)

I have no stories to share, but letting y'all know that I am enjoying reading your stories!


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## DS (Oct 10, 2011)

> lol, i m in construction biz, and not like the old days when the salesman or woman, had some actual experience with their product, now they watch a vid and know it all, bummer, as i d really like to learn about some of the new products on market by word of mouth in lieu of a video and some third party experiencer.
> 
> the const. biz is full of horror and funny stories, after 55 years in it, i oughta write a book
> Rj in az
> ...


RJ,
I look forward to reading some of your stories here!

PCDub, thanks for the encouragement!


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## DS (Oct 10, 2011)

Madmark2,
I think if I were in that guy's position I would have to let it wear off.

You did remind me of the story of a gal I met once who came home and found her boyfriend in bed with another woman.
At first she was furious, but then she plotted her revenge.
She waited a few days, then made nice and got him all excited to be with her.
Then at the right moment she super-glued his aroused bits to his stomach.

She said the cops never did stop laughing about it.

She ended getting two months in county for assault, but she claimed it was worth it to watch him squirm.


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## DS (Oct 10, 2011)

> LOL, I like it.
> 
> Have a couple WW related business stories, but not from a cabinet shop or WW business perspective.
> Mine professional efforts are from electronics world, where my WW knowledge and hobby translated into brief opportunities to work wood at my day job.
> ...


In addition to woodworking for a living, I earned a degree in electronic engineering and worked in Aerospace for a dozen years or so before realizing I had a passion for the woodworking and switched back.

I mostly did work with satellite platform transmitters for Tiros class weather satellites. (NOAA)
I also did system integration and test for the original Iridium constellation.

One day I had a GOES ground station transmitter control board under test on my work bench and a new hire engineer with "tons of experience" walks up behind me, reaches out pointing at the control board and asks, " what is this?"

A perfectly innocent and valid question, except she wasn't grounded and she discharged static into the board with a little blue spark,

I replied, it used to be a $30k GOES transmitter. Now it is an unreliable paperweight.

Oops.


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## LeeRoyMan (Feb 23, 2019)

When my business was doing commercial work,
I had a store in Houston, Texas that we were doing.
We were travelling in a 24' Penske truck, packed full of display cabinets and such.

When we got to the Mall, the Parking Lot that led to the door that we had to enter through had one of those bars going across the entry to limit vehicles to 7' or so.

Well seeing that it was the closest door to where we had to go, we drove to the side and hopped the curb into the parking lot a backed er up to the door (early morning before anyone was there).

As soon as opening came security guards were going ape ******************** that we were there. 1st 1, then 3, then the suits.
I really didn't think it was that big of deal until they told me there was underground parking below us.
Apparently that bar is across the entrance because of a weight limit.
I got a good ass chewing, Luckily the truck did break through to the other side,

They did let us unload, in fact they pretty much insisted, lol 
We were on the ******************** list for the rest of the install.


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## DS (Oct 10, 2011)

"Master key"
I did some refurb work at an Embassy Suites here in Phoenix.
The buildings had fallen into disrepair and Embassy Suites was threatening to revoke the franchise if they didn't bring it into compliance.

Much of the cabinetry in the on-site restaurant was in need of repair and refinishing and I was hired to do the work.
When that project was done, they contacted me about repairs that needed to be done in some of the suites.

They were updating the fire alarm and sprinkler systems and needed someone who could open the faux beams that the wiring and pipes were inside so the rework could be done, then to return later to close up and refinish the beams.

When I showed up to do the work they had a dozen suites on one floor taken offline for renovations.
The on-site manager took me to his private office and made me a key to access the rooms I needed.

I opened all the beams for the sprinkler guys then left for the day.

They called me the following week and I returned and began closing the beams. 
When I was done, I tracked down the on-site manager and returned the key I was issued.

Well, unbeknownst to me, (There is that phrase again), the key I was issued was a "Master key" which would have gained access to any guest room or office in the entire complex. 
I had assumed it was programmed only for the suites I was working on, and normally it would have, but, in his haste, it was easier to make the master key than look up each suite number that was offline and add those to the key one at a time.

The worst part was he did not remember who he issued the key to, only that he had an unaccounted for master key for about a week!

Corporate had ripped him a new one and he was plenty upset with me, even though he had never requested the key to be returned each day.

I asked why they didn't just deactivate the key, but he said it didn't work that way.
Sadly, they didn't manage to bring the building into compliance in time and Embassy Suites revoked their franchise charter.

They finished the renovations and it is now a Holiday Inn Express.


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## DS (Oct 10, 2011)

> When my business was doing commercial work,
> I had a store in Houston, Texas that we were doing.
> We were travelling in a 24 Penske truck, packed full of display cabinets and such.
> 
> ...


I could see how they might get a bit touchy about a truck breaking through the ceiling of the floor below.

What I want to know is how they correlate vehicle height with the actual weight of a vehicle.
It seems a bit flawed to me.


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## Ocelot (Mar 6, 2011)

This has nothing to do with cabinet shops, but LeeRoyMan's story of the shopping mall parking lot indident remined me of it.

About 18 years ago, I bought a minivan on eBay from a dealer in Montreal Canada. I live in Alabama.

He arranged for delivery by an outfit named "Transport Laberge". I got connected with them. They routinely sent a truck from Montreal to Miami every two weeks carrying cars. Apparently there are cars in Montreal that sell better in Florida and vise-versa. We agreed to meet in Atlanta which was at least $300 cheaper than him deliverying directly to me.

The driver told me he would leave Montreal Saturday morning, spend the night somewhere and meet me in Atlanta about 6pm Sunday. We agreed to meet, you guessed it, at a shopping mall.

So Sunday afternoon, I was waiting for his call, since it's a 4 hour drive to Atlanta. He didn't call and didn't answer for awhile. I was getting anxious. Finally, he called and said he couldn't make it - because he got hung up at the border 5 hours on Saturday. It was probably 4 or 5pm by then. I told him I had to work Monday and pressed him to drive on. He agreed. (I still feel bad about it all these years later). So finally he called about 10pm and said he was 4 hours out and we drove to Atlanta. (I still feel bad about it, but it could have been worse). 2AM, we got to the mall, and the same deal, as LeeRoyMan mentioned, so he drove around the barriers and we did the delivery. A car hauler with 5 or 6 vehicles loaded … on the 2nd level of the parking deck. Nothing bad happened and I didn't realiize the situation until we were leaving there.

Like I said, I still feel bad about pressing that guy to drive 16 or more hours that day and the parking deck and all that.

-Paul


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## Knockonit (Nov 5, 2017)

LOL, here in phoenix, we have streets and avenues, one is west, one is east, 
well someone in the office negated to put down correct location, boys showed up to fix some posts in front of house and do some facia work, 
they begin and owner comes out asking what they are doing, foreman discussed with HO, he just nodded and went in side, general supt was out checking projects as at that time we had a dozen trucks on the road, and they were not at the location he had, got ahold of foreman, supt broke land speed records, to get to job, but alas, the facia, shingle mold and posts were out and new ones going in, roof damaged, which is normal usually have a roofer come and 3ply it once we are done.. 
boys were beside themselves, HO came out and asked if we were gonna paint the new work, supt had a stroke, called me, and of course, we painted it, fella sent me a thank you card for a few years, hehe he thought it was funny. coulda gone the other way. 
stuff happens, this is just one of many snafus over the years, some not so lucky to not be an issue.
rj in az


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## controlfreak (Jun 29, 2019)

I sent a two man crew to repair an alarm system and the HO told me there is a brick on the third step and the key is under it to get in. I send the guys and they call "we have looked in every closet, attic and garage and can't find any equipment anywhere". I said go look in the kitchen for some mail or utility bill or something with a name and address on it. Yup you guessed it, they had the wrong house. I can't imagine how paranoid the HO were with new footprints in the carpet and clothes moved in every closet but nothing taken.


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## CaptainKlutz (Apr 23, 2014)

"What? I can't hear?"

Long long ago, in far away place, during my young and foolish days; wanted to be rock star. 
But I could not play any instruments, nor can I keep a beat on drums. sigh..

So I responded to classified ad; wanting people who like music, had knowledge of audio equipment, and wanted to learn new skills. 
Turns out the ad was for local college and they had several openings. I had worked part time as electronics tech in same College Radio Station and was easily accepted for job, but that is another story.

The gig was under direction of Assistant Dean, with support from local Union electricians and carpenters. We started with ~20 people for 1 week of full time orientation and skills check out by experts. We spent another 3 weeks working side by side part time as apprentices with skill trades. After end of 2nd week, there where only 4 of us with skills and stupidity to make it to 3rd week.

The last week we are informed the school has approved $150,000 for a complete sound/light stage overhaul for school auditorium, and another $400k to update basketball arena systems to support live concerts. This would be $M's in today's money. We remaining monkeys got the honor of being cheap slave labor; while building all the speaker cabinets, lighting equipment boxes, wiring the sound/light control boards, as well termination of many miles of power/light/audio cables. Dean claimed the school would save $400k building the stuff with slave labor, instead of buying it ready made. :-(0)

For couple weeks, shipment after shipment of large heavy boxes arrives. Hundreds of speakers, dozens of amplifiers, metal racking systems, spot/flood lights floor to ceiling, gantry frames, scaffolding, giant spools wire only moved with forklift, etc. We had to use basement boiler room and secure offsite storage to get enough space to store everything before build(s) started.

The slave monkeys built what we were told. I was lucky, already had WW skills and had built a dozen speakers before the gig started. The speaker boxes were complicated 3/4" MDF interior with 3/4" BB ply exterior panels. Larger boxes were port reflex, or folded horn designs; that required jigs and assembly fixtures to ensure they were built to handle massive sound pressure levels, not vibrate, yet resonant at right frequencies. Bass boxes used three 4×8 sheets, and 5lbs of screws each. 
yada, yada, roughly a month later …....

One Saturday while marveling at our speaker building prowess and final assembly of drivers in wood shop, someone who shall rename anonymous; decides to hook up ~4000W of power amplifiers to drive the speakers for a sound check. 
We had a small radio and amplifier we used for shop radio. Plus signal generator and oscilloscope for testing each box performance individually. But 'we' wanted to hear them ALL make some noise as rock and roll gods intended. Of course, the bosses and union folks had left already, and was only us twenty year old monkeys left in wood shop sweeping floor. 
Have to picture a room maybe 40×100, that is 40% filled with Industrial wood working tools and rest is stuffed 10ft tall with ~48 speakers (dual 15" sub woofers, quad 10" mid-range speakers, 8-6" upper mid-range speaker cabinets, 2 foot deep coaxial horn tweeters), plus audio equipment and wiring. Basically enough sound to fill a 2000+ person sized auditorium.

We proceed to hook up cassette player and after game of Rock/Paper/Scissors, the winner decides to load it with mix tape that started with Deep Purple - Smoke on the Water. 
Whoa…. You can really FEEL the power. 
Was just like being at the Deep Purple concert the month before. :-(0) 
It was magnanimous to hear speaker stack working the first time.

Looking outside the shop double doors, and into auditorium directly across the hall; we are laughing as all kinds of students gather looking for the party and loud music.

About 1/2 way through Smoke on Water, there are numerous security personnel and teachers running into shop, waving their arms and screaming "stop, stop, turn it down!", or so they say…..

"What? I can't hear you?" was our reply. 

No one was surprised we had done something 'loopy'. We had spent all day spraying 5 gallon pails of solvent based contact cement to attach Tolex fabric (black plastic that reeks of vinyl chloride) and hardware to cabinets.

Seems the bass speakers were shaking the concrete foundation? There were several offices adjacent to shop space, and they all had stuff vibrating off the shelves, as if Earthquake had hit building. Security guards had video with images dancing to the beat of music down the hall, and stuff sliding off the shelves in Dean's office. The boiler operators down stairs was really upset, as they claimed to spend the next week finding new leaks in system that had zero issues before the 'sound' test.

The event become legend. There were some settling cracks in building foundation near door that led to Deans' office. No one remembers seeing the cracks before the event. Like all good rumors; the sound check morphed into story of disgruntled students that tried to destroy the Dean's office. 

Dean handled down a new shop rule. Volume knob is never allowed to go past 2 in wood shop or you are fired. Also had to surrender my master key to shop and equipment storage lockers. Worse part was demotion from Jr assistant shop monkey to 'Junior'.

#IAMAKLUTZ, not an idiot. I was wearing a set of extreme noise prevention ear plugs. They limit the total sound pressure, but still allow hearing speech (usually). Commonly worn by hunters when shooting outdoors. My ears still didn't stop ringing for several days after that shop fun. 

About a week later, we assembled the speaker arrays on scaffolding per master design in auditorium. Had a local band scheduled to play the next weekend, who stopped by to help with sound check and test out new lighting system. All I could say, was; 'What? I can't hear it …..' 
Seemed a little wimpy and under powered to me. 

Have a great day!


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## bigblockyeti (Sep 9, 2013)

> As soon as opening came security guards were going ape ******************** that we were there. 1st 1, then 3, then the suits.
> I really didn t think it was that big of deal until they told me there was underground parking below us.
> Apparently that bar is across the entrance because of a weight limit.
> I got a good ass chewing, Luckily the truck did break through to the other side,
> ...


If someone decided to use a max height bar and assume that would qualify as limiting maximum weight, they might need to revisit 1st grade.


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## DS (Oct 10, 2011)

Kind of reminds me of that scene from back to the future where Marty cranks up the gigantic speaker and blows it up.

Too funny.



> "What? I can t hear?"
> 
> Long long ago, in far away place, during my young and foolish days; wanted to be rock star.
> But I could not play any instruments, nor can I keep a beat on drums. sigh..
> ...


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## DS (Oct 10, 2011)

> LOL, here in phoenix, we have streets and avenues, one is west, one is east,
> well someone in the office negated to put down correct location, boys showed up to fix some posts in front of house and do some facia work,
> they begin and owner comes out asking what they are doing, foreman discussed with HO, he just nodded and went in side, general supt was out checking projects as at that time we had a dozen trucks on the road, and they were not at the location he had, got ahold of foreman, supt broke land speed records, to get to job, but alas, the facia, shingle mold and posts were out and new ones going in, roof damaged, which is normal usually have a roofer come and 3ply it once we are done..
> boys were beside themselves, HO came out and asked if we were gonna paint the new work, supt had a stroke, called me, and of course, we painted it, fella sent me a thank you card for a few years, hehe he thought it was funny. coulda gone the other way.
> ...


The homeowner knew they were at the wrong place and took advantage.
What a jerk move. Some people… have no respect.


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## DS (Oct 10, 2011)

> I sent a two man crew to repair an alarm system and the HO told me there is a brick on the third step and the key is under it to get in. I send the guys and they call "we have looked in every closet, attic and garage and can t find any equipment anywhere". I said go look in the kitchen for some mail or utility bill or something with a name and address on it. Yup you guessed it, they had the wrong house. I can t imagine how paranoid the HO were with new footprints in the carpet and clothes moved in every closet but nothing taken.
> 
> - controlfreak


They were lucky they didn't get arrested or shot.


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## CaptainKlutz (Apr 23, 2014)

"You want what, by when??" or " The one that got away" or "Good choice Klutz"

Previous story on college speaking building job, and revenue loss to suppliers; get the attention of local sound/lighting company. They sold, leased, rented, and MFG equipment for restaurants, bars, theaters, schools, or bands. This company was largest supplier in the area, and had division that ran some local music stores. Had a large warehouse filled with new & used equipment, plus electronics repair shop, wood shop, metal shop, and even garage for storing maintaining band tour buses and semi-tractor/trailer rigs for hauling equipment.

They had a promoter who scheduled a big tour down the east coast every year, ending up in FL for 6-8 weeks of spring break season, then returning up via I-75 by May playing a gig most every night. Chances are if you attended a large live concert in OH/MI/IN/IL/PA/KY or were a spring breaker during 70-80's; then you experienced what this company provided. Enough background….

The sound/light company offered me a job after the college ordeal. Had worked part time ~8 months, mostly repairing broken equipment; and occasionally help wood shop. Got call one night asking if I could work full time+ for up to 4 weeks. Had a rush job, and needed lots of help. Even asked me to call any friends I knew that might be interested.

Story was: A warehouse sized party palace caught fire after New Year's day party; and large stage setup was total loss. They needed small army to build 120+ speaker cabinets, dozen amplifier racks, sound boards, audio/lighting + cables; basically 2 semi-trailers worth of equipment. This bar equipment was supposed to be refurbished and sent on annual spring break tour in 3 weeks, and there ware no replacements available. 
Ruh Roh…. All I could say is "You want what, by when?"

Knowing it takes 3 months to get high power audio equipment delivered, thought request was doomed immediately. Luckily the promoter had received a contract for big name summer out door concert series with large deposit; and had supplies on order to build summer concert job. But we had planned to build every thing over the next 4 months, not weeks. 

Place was chaos when I walked in the next day. If you don't know this: folks that like loud stage music back then, also came to work buzzed all of time too. The wood shop was used to building 1-3 boxes day, using 1.5 man crew + part time help. They had no idea how to make 120+ boxes in 3 weeks.

First thing I did was set up assembly line. Built new assembly tables, and some material staging carts for each size speaker. Cleared space in warehouse, and wrote some crude instructions for each table. We had to average ~11 boxes a day to make schedule. Making ten 1×1x3 10lb tweeter boxes was a lot easier than making 10 3×5x2 sub woofers weighing 100lbs each, so we started with large ones first.

Worked 10-12 hour a day, even though I was taking graduate classes. Wood work was easy part to find folks who could do right, thanks to Tolex hiding the mistakes. Spent most of my time at end of line; installing drivers, cross overs, and testing as unskilled folks either broke to much stuff, or tried to take it home when it was done. Wood shop built all the speakers in time, but still need cables, amplifier racks, and lighting gantries finished.

The promoter got lucky, and cold weather delayed the start of concert tour by a week. So crew as able to continue and get everything done on time. We were given hazard pay to drop everything and come work like slaves. Got paid overtime too. Anyone lasting entire time got a completion bonus as well. The project paid for my last semester in college.

At the end of build, the promoter invited all of his employees to dinner at warehouse. Two of the local bands that were going on spring tour were setup on the portable stage with all equipment that been cobbled together. We enjoyed free food and massive amounts of alcohol, while we watched a free concert. Like all good parties without a valid noise permit; about 11pm the police are banging on warehouse doors. Seems a neighborhood 3/4 mile away was complaining about the music. Knew it was only a mater of time for police to come. The speaker columns were ~20ft wide and even taller, with 6000+ watts of power behind it. Not to mention the massive Marshall stacks used by bands on stage. 
Hard to believe wood working was this much fun? 

Slight twist and longer ending to this story;

Three weeks later, working back stage sound mix job on a out door event. One of the 5 bands playing, has their bass player drink 2 bottles of Jack Daniels before show, then falls off stage on 1st song; breaking his collar bone. The band's equipment manager was working the mixing boards, jumps on stage (after ambulance break) and band resumes. I get moved from monitor mix, to main mix boards; as the only one qualified to run dual 30 channel mix boards worth great many thousand $$ each.

At end of concert, band sound manager and the promoter, compliments me for having a good ear and the bands never sounded better on stage. Pretty sure they were both drunk/stoned? 
Regardless, promoter tells me his sound engineer/manager died on spring break tour due drug overdose; and he needs new one to join the tour yesterday. Which is now somewhere in Carolina's.

Here I am couple months from graduation, with no job offers in my engineering field yet, offered a sound engineering job, making decent salary, all expenses paid traveling with band(s); working in music industry. 
What could be wrong? 
First, would have to drop out of school the next day. Second, Promoter would only sign contract through end of spring & summer concert series, or ~7 months. After that would be unemployed or could work part time in his music stores, until the next tour. Oops.

Was hardest career decision of my life at the time. 
Sleep all day, party all night, or hope I find a real job and make my family proud? 
Decision was easy. Is very hard to work wood from tour bus, or hotel room. LOL

So I finished the degree and got a job making industrial robots and machines, that make things like audio equipment. 

For many years I wondered, what kind of messed up adult I would have become, if I had taken that job?
About 10 years later, wonderment was resolved:

Took a consulting gig for a US instrument speaker/amplifier mfg who must remain anonymous. They had some quality problems and wanted outside review of automation and quality systems. 
Surprise, surprise. 
Monday morning 90% of the work force was either late, hungover, drunk, stoned, or all of the above. 
Break room and assembly line was full of folks more interested in deciding who has best story about the band they saw, sex they had, or how messed up the got; than actually following directions and make a quality product. 
During my time at company, met a final test technician who bragged about bands he toured with, as I learned HE accepted the sound manager job I turned down. :-(0)

Poor guy spent his days sitting in closet sized box with guitar, conveyor input entering one side, platform where he tested each unit, and then put on output conveyor for packaging, with a sticker inside the cabinet with his name and number on it. After some basic computer frequency testing, his reward for good product was a loud final test using a couple licks from his favorite songs. If production was slow, and his hands were sore from playing guitar all day; would have a Marlboro right there on clean room production floor, while he waited for next box. Turns out the booth was vented to outside as the test equipment and amplifiers made the box to warm not to have ventilation. No one new he was smoking as he had curtains to control airflow.
Never had the heart to tell him I turned that same job down, and it could be be me in box instead.

Thanks for reading to end.
Hope you enjoyed the stories of my cabinet making for sound systems.

Have great day!


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## DS (Oct 10, 2011)

"Random drug testing"

When we first opened the new shop back in the late 90's, we fully equipped all the tools we thought we would need. That included all necessary machinery, power tools and hand tools.

About a week after opening, we needed the extension ladder to add a data line and, lo and behold, our one week old extension ladder was nowhere to be found.

Likewise, over the next few weeks, small tools like sanders and drills started going missing. 
We realized they were walking out the back door.

We really felt like we wanted to be able to trust our workers and not have to install cameras at all the doorways.
The solution turned out to be random drug testing - Which quickly seemed to solve the problem.

BTW, I quickly learned that random drug testing meant that you choose the one guy you suspect is ripping you off, and then you draw two more names out of a hat to appear to be fair about it.

It really sucked having to repurchase all those brand new tools, but the shop became a much safer place after that.

Also, just a note. It definitely is a hazard to yourself and others to operate tools and machinery while impaired on drugs. Don't do it.

We decided early on that we wanted to give every opportunity for a worker who tested positive to rehabilitate himself.
So, if you did happen to test positive for drugs, you could keep your job if you agreed to go to rehab (on the company dime) and to submit to, and pass, periodic drug testing.

Despite what we felt was a generous proposal for rehab, not one person ever voluntarily opted for that choice while I was there.


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## Desert_Woodworker (Jan 28, 2015)

DS- I could tell the tale when starting with my Laguna CNC in 2014… and this "expert" pain in the ass who later became my friend… Back to names… as a schoolteacher when taking the attendance since 2005- names change.
Yes since they are part of society and look up "names" how and why they change…

.. honestly, I don't remember a student named Larry or Doug.

and in the long run,'s we are identified as numbers… very similar to G-code

Here is interesting info- History of numerical control
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_numerical_control

The final question does the CNC care or even know about you or the programmer?

Therefore, my fellow human, I enjoy your posts…


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## woodbutcherbynight (Oct 21, 2011)

> "Random drug testing"
> 
> BTW, I quickly learned that random drug testing meant that you choose the one guy you suspect is ripping you off, and then you draw two more names out of a hat to appear to be fair about it.


In Iraq we would be the two extra guys that got sent for that.


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## LeeRoyMan (Feb 23, 2019)

OK, so I've always been rough around the edges, a bit of a rebel.

We did a store in California in the South Coast Plaza Mall. 
(actually have done 3 stores there) Black Ice Accessories / Stuart Weitzmans / and an El Portel Luggage Store
Some of you southern Californians may know the place, pretty up scale place. I mean they touch up paint the walls in the back hallways every day, masonite on the floors from the entrance to where your working, no dust or footprints to come out of the store, point is they're very strict.

I brought in all the Built-In cabinetry primmered and ready for paint. 
After getting everything installed it was ready for paint, and as you know you can't spray lacquer in California,
(as far as I know, maybe you can in a booth?)

Well after the mall closed for the night, I went to town with an airless painting up everything.


















When we came back early in the morning the smell of lacquer had filled the whole mall area around the store.
I was freaking out.
We still had to do all the clean up and finish wiring all the electrical for the lighting.
Needless to say we got it done as fast as possible, packed up and got the heck out of there.

It could have been bad but, nobody ever said anything about it.

No moral to the story or anything, I just thought it was a Tale to share.


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## DS (Oct 10, 2011)

"You've been at this a long time when…"

Back when I started building cabinets in the mid eighties, Oak was just coming into its heyday.
Actual hardwood cabinets were seen as a luxury and everyone seemingly wanted it.

For some reason, Whitewashed Oak became all the rage. Not only our shop, but, seemingly every shop in town was making Whitewashed Oak cabinets as fast as they could cut down the Oak trees.

By the mid to late nineties, though, a new client would walk into our showroom and almost immediately pronounce, I want "anything but Oak"

Oak had become ubiquitous and passe'.

For a time, Maple and Cherry seemed to fill in the demand, but the cost of these woods are inherently higher here in the Southwest region and nothing seemed to gain much traction.

Alder was cheap, but at the time, it was hard to get much veneer and plywood in Alder. 
As soon as the distribution channels loaded up on Alder plywood, though, Alder, well, it took off like crazy!

The early 2000's saw an Alder boom. 
A client would come in, say the magic phrase, ("Anything but Oak" ) and next thing you know an Alder kitchen would show up in their house.

By the late 20-teens, Alder is still a thing - though, with the advent of Chip and Joanna and the HGTV generation, painted cabinets, with a healthy dose of ship lap panels seems to be mostly what people are asking for.

While I am not a huge fan of painted cabinets, I take solace in the fact that, this too, shall pass.

This week, for about the dozenth time in my career, I've been asked to design a kitchen for a remodel project, where I immediately recognized the handiwork of the previous designer - none other than yours truly.

Up until this week, though, I wasn't sure how I was suppose to feel about it. 
On some level it felt a bit like rejection-"What do you mean, you want to tear out your beautifully-designed Alder kitchen?" (Heheh.)

This last week though, I began to see a new light.

The house had a truly awful kitchen and there were tell-tale signs of my fingerprints all over it.

In all fairness, builders in Arizona have been historically cheap sons of guns who would architecturally design kitchens in a way to reduce the cabinetry costs, even at the expense of decent functionality.
This kitchen was no exception.

Fortunately, the client has a good budget this time around and we are able to tear out some walls and design it to favor the homeowner's gourmet cooking aspirations rather than the builder's profit margins.

I've never told a client who worked on their previous kitchens, but it is tempting, at times, to want to just apologize without giving a reason.

I just have to resign myself to give them the best Chip and Joanna version of their kitchen I can muster and hope I'll still be around in twenty more years when they walk back into my showroom and pronounce, "anything, but painted cabinets."

Maybe I could even interest them with something in a nice Whitewashed Oak.


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## Desert_Woodworker (Jan 28, 2015)

> "You've been at this a long time when…"
> 
> Back when I started building cabinets in the mid eighties, Oak was just coming into its heyday.
> Actual hardwood cabinets were seen as a luxury and everyone seemingly wanted it.
> ...


*
Maybe I could even interest them with something in a nice Whitewashed Oak.*

_I remember it being referred to as "pickled white oak"_


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## LeeRoyMan (Feb 23, 2019)

You mean like this?


















I used to tint it with a little sandle wood tint to take away the so whitish of it.

I just had sorta same thing, only it was a job I had did back around 86' (White washed, imagine that) lol
I just finished a remodel and the neighbor had stopped in to meet me. Told me they had just bought the house a few doors down and wanted me to do some work for them.
I walked over to see what they had going on and low and behold they were tearing out a built-in I had done.










It was kind of bitter sweet. It was nice seeing how it had lasted, and the condition it was still in after 34ish years.
Sad to see it being torn out and thrown in the trash…


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## DS (Oct 10, 2011)

I detect a PTSD style flashback coming on….



> You mean like this?
> 
> 
> 
> ...


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## Knockonit (Nov 5, 2017)

hehe, yeah red oak, almost all our subdivisions from 80 to ;86 had oak cabt.s

on another note, 
sent a crew out on a remodel, bath and kitchen, while they had the floor layout and information of who, what and where, boys didn't look at it, instead listened to Homeowner, and destroyed a beautiful tile bathroom, when i showed up to go over some details i almost had a coronary, boys well one of them lost his opportunity a week or so later due to his attitude towards (gays, or that other gender) can't have that, 
'
Anyway, ended up with a new tile shower, HO was awesome, had no issue buying tile as they wanted it redone anyway, i foot the labor side and fixture side, just to keep the piece,

things happen, sometimes for no good reason, but attention to the project is sometimes a thing that the boys in field do. And we did also employ two gals who hung doors, awesome team, right up until a commercial supt, sexually harrassed one of them, she got an undercover cop to witness it, went ugly for a very large const. company here in phoenix, 
times they are a changing, imagine a whole lotta law suits gonna come outta the near future due to this PC crap
happy thursday
rj in az


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## DonBroussard (Mar 27, 2012)

I don't have any good stories to add, but I did want to comment on how I am enjoying reading the stories. You are good storytellers and good writers. I'd love to sit around a campfire and just listen in . . .


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## woodbutcherbynight (Oct 21, 2011)

> I don t have any good stories to add, but I did want to comment on how I am enjoying reading the stories. You are good storytellers and good writers. I d love to sit around a campfire and just listen in . . .
> 
> - Don Broussard


Same here, enjoy the humor.


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## DS (Oct 10, 2011)

There's plenty more to come as I get time and as I can get my addled mind to recall them.

Does anyone else find they spend more time correcting autocorrect than what it used to take to fix my own typos?
Just sayin'


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## woodbutcherbynight (Oct 21, 2011)

> There's plenty more to come as I get time and as I can get my addled mind to recall them.
> 
> Does anyone else find they spend more time correcting autocorrect than what it used to take to fix my own typos?
> Just sayin'
> ...


Yes, more fun if you use 2 different languages


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## MadMark (Jun 3, 2014)

Yah! Its forever 2nd guessing me and trade specific terminology really aggravates it. I tried entering MSRP and it keeps changing it to Murphy. Not to mention that the last update to my tablet shrank the on screen keyboard - too small for these pudgy digits!

-----

Was about 15 and working on a 2nd storey roof. The eaves had gutters so the ladder ended *under* the eaves. Getting up wasn't too bad but getting back down was a trip. Since the end of the ladder was under the eaves you had to lay on your stomach, slide your legs off and *FEEL* for that first rung - 30' up … *SCAREY!!*

I got to the ground turned away from the ladder went to take a step, tripped on a tree root and splatted flat on my face.

I don't like heights and haven't climbed higher than a stepstool since.


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## DS (Oct 10, 2011)

Oh, many a time getting down from an eight foot eaves onto a six foot step ladder - Feet dangling trying to find purchase on the "this is not a step" step. (Brings back fond memories from a time when I walked barefoot to school in the snow (in Phoenix) and it was uphill both ways.) heheh

Lol r.e. The tree root. That's a better a fall than from the top of the ladder I suppose. 
Nothing hurt but the pride hopefully.


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## Desert_Woodworker (Jan 28, 2015)

*DS- The best stories would be about the amorist customer…*


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## DS (Oct 10, 2011)

> *DS- The best stories would be about the amorist customer…*
> 
> - Desert_Woodworker


Does that mean you are going to favor us with a story?


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## Desert_Woodworker (Jan 28, 2015)

> *DS- The best stories would be about the amorist customer…*
> 
> - Desert_Woodworker
> 
> ...


Dude my post was supposed to be a wink and nod…


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## DS (Oct 10, 2011)

Okay. Got it.

I don't make these stories up… so I can't "invent" it.
So, I thought you might have a story to share. Guess not.
(Still also winking and nodding back)

Hope you are well.


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## woodbutcherbynight (Oct 21, 2011)

This is one we all can relate to.

Neighbor brings his friend along to ask me about making a cabinet. He wants this and that detail and a high gloss finish and so on. I ask what is your budget.

Wait for it.

Just wait…....

$50.

I smiled and opened the shop door. GET…. OUT.

LOL


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## DS (Oct 10, 2011)

"Champagne dreams, beer budget"

We did a house for the owner of a local discount appliance store chain.
It was a fairly large house which had a den right next to the main entryway. 
The owner wanted to really doll it up.

He had a picture of the Enkeboll showroom with reeded columns, arches, carved dentil corbels below the carved crown - the works.
It took a few days, but I rendered it just as he described it.

When I told him it cost more than $70k for all the millwork, he nearly fell off of his chair.
His budget for the room was only $8k.

I guess I should've started with the budget first and saved myself the work.
Lesson learned.

He had built a very large house cutting every corner you could as if it were the cheapest tract house.
It was a little sad, but he got his fairly plain looking $8k den.


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## DS (Oct 10, 2011)

"First world problems"

When your Guest House has a full kitchen, living room, one bedroom and two baths.
One bath is the guest master bath off the guest bedroom and the other is a full bath off of the guest living room. 
You know, in case your guests have guests over, they don't have to use the guest master bath, I guess.


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## woodbutcherbynight (Oct 21, 2011)

> "First world problems"
> 
> When your Guest House has a full kitchen, living room, one bedroom and two baths.
> One bath is the guest master bath off the guest bedroom and the other is a full bath off of the guest living room.
> ...


This guest thing doesn't work for me.


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## bigblockyeti (Sep 9, 2013)

> This guest thing doesn t work for me.
> 
> - woodbutcherbynight


Me too, I mean I don't mind having guests but the visit time is terminal and subject to change. I'll never ask someone to leave but I'll drop some pretty big hints up to and including becoming a temporary nudist, at least more so than already.


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## DS (Oct 10, 2011)

> This guest thing doesn t work for me.
> 
> - woodbutcherbynight
> 
> ...


That puts you back to third world problems at that point r.e. Temporary nudism.


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## bigblockyeti (Sep 9, 2013)

It's only a problem if it bothers me, in the summer the only I'm out is spending a little more on sunscreen.


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## woodbutcherbynight (Oct 21, 2011)

> Me too, I mean I don t mind having guests but the visit time is terminal and subject to change. I ll never ask someone to leave but I ll drop some pretty big hints up to and including becoming a temporary nudist, at least more so than already.
> 
> - bigblockyeti


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## woodbutcherbynight (Oct 21, 2011)

> It s only a problem if it bothers me, in the summer the only I m out is spending a little more on sunscreen.
> 
> - bigblockyeti


Got shot 4 times in Iraq to the chest. Armor held but left some wicked bruises. I am in hospital in Germany and decided to get up and use toilet by myself. My right arm is in air cast so I only have use of my left hand. Some sadistic person decided it was a good idea to put a mirror from sink all the way over to toilet. I am standing their and fusing with the gown and just tugged it off, and looked up. OMG. It was hideous!!!

Went to Ukraine for recovery and stayed at my place. Decided to go to beach. I kept my shirt on. No sense scaring the locals.


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## DS (Oct 10, 2011)

Not a story, per se', at least not yet.

These just arrived on a Blue truck with a smile on the side.
I waited far too long to invest in a decent set of diamond stones.

This weekend will see my carving chisels and lathe tools all get a good touch.

1200 mesh and 8000 mesh -That should get something sharp if I don't mess it up.


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## woodbutcherbynight (Oct 21, 2011)

> Not a story, per se', at least not yet.
> 
> These just arrived on a Blue truck with a smile on the side.
> I waited far too long to invest in a decent set of diamond stones.
> ...


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## JAAune (Jan 22, 2012)

Not all stories are of epic origin. A series of events (both fortunate and unfortunate) can snowball into a tale when everything merges at once into a single, memorable day.

*Event #1*

A couple years after starting the business, we were planning a move out of a rented shop into a building of our own. That involved moving the business's equipment out of the rented space, relocating my personal workshop out of my parent's garage and scouring eBay and Craigslist for new equipment.

The move out of the rented space proceeded without a hitch. One day to clear out our stuff and one day to clean the place. The other move had a weird incident. During the sorting process, my shopvac was placed outside to clear some space. Within 10 minutes it vanished while we were 10 feet away on the other side of a closed door. Some kleptomaniac absconded with the $5 shopvac I'd purchased from a neighbor's garage sale.

*Event#2*

The used 1999 Ford Ranger I bought as my first vehicle was a reliable truck. At least it was if one could keep rust at bay. I can only recall a single malfunction that wasn't rust related. My advice to future buyers of used Rangers? Get a rust-free truck out of Nevada.

Brake lines rusted out, springs rusted out. Gas fill pipe rusted out. Eventually the coolant line rusted out and killed the head gasket in the process. The truck was in decent shape by this point so I opted to keep it and had the gasket replaced.

Ranger enthusiasts are aware of a quirk that this model year (maybe others too) has. The vanes of the water pump tend to rust resulting in percolating coolant instead of circulating coolant. Not being an enthusiast myself, I was caught unaware by this phantom rust and lost the head gasket again. This time around the mechanic condemned the transmission (not rust related for a change) and I deposited the truck in the care of the local scrapyard in exchange for three Benjamins.

*Event#3*

Spending money on a new truck during the relocation phase of the business was a bad idea. New machinery makes money. Trucks don't. But borrowing a vehicle from family wasn't a viable long-term business plan so I decided upon a budget and started shopping the used market.

A week or so of searching and I found a Tacoma on Grossinger's website that seemed like a decent vehicle within budget. I inquired about the availability and made an appointment with a dealer to check it out at their Chicago location and recruited my business partner for a ride. Upon arrival I asked for the dealer and was promptly poached by a different one.

Grossinger's Chicago showroom is one of those multi-story parking lot arrangements where customers wait in a lobby and have cars brought up for inspection. Pretty fancy and rather fun to check out while waiting for the truck. The fun ended when the dealer returned from the lot and informed us that the Tacoma had been sold and they had no used trucks left in their inventory.

Being setup for a pointless appointment to see a non-existent truck from a dealership that had no trucks to offer had me slightly steamed. I remained polite and left without a word of complaint but a mind full of unkindly thoughts which were verbalized for the benefit of my captive audience on the drive back

*Event #4*

I-57 is the quickest route to and from Chicago and intersecting that a little south of the city is route 30 known as Lincoln highway. That intersection is home to the Matteson Auto Mall. I was aware of its existence but it wasn't until I spotted the sea of cars that I thought maybe the Grossinger's trip could still be salvaged.

We coasted around the various dealerships without finding anything of promise at first. We eventually drove around the back of Hyundai lot and tucked into that corner was a mysterious Dodge Ram crew cab. It had no tags or markings. A crew cab Ram was more truck than I'd planned to buy but this one looked old and tired enough that I thought there's a chance it might work out. The clerk at Hyundai directed us to neighboring Planet Toyota.

We encountered salesman Glen at the door who took us in and gave us all the details. Turns out both dealerships were owned by the same man and the Ram was a recent trade-in that was parked at Hyundai while waiting for inspection and servicing. He instructed another employee to bring the truck over for a test drive.

We waited for awhile but it was worth the wait. During this time I got a call from the Grossinger's saleswoman that I was supposed to meet. She was wondering if I was still going to show up.

"I was there and someone informed me the Tacoma was sold and you had no trucks available so I left."

"Oh."

Priceless.

Dodge Ram shows up and I test drive it. Asking price was out of my budget so I told the dealer what I had and the sales manager made an offer I could afford (barely). My business partner and I were sitting in the showroom waiting for the complimentary detailing and feeling pleased about the conclusion of our trip.

During this wait I got a second call. One of the managers at Grossinger's wanted to inquire about my experience.

"Someone informed me the Tacoma was sold and you had no trucks available so I left. And I just bought a truck so I'm no longer looking."

Priceless X3.

Based on my experience that day, if I ever buy a new truck, I might go straight to Planet Toyota. Easy, clear communication.

*Event #5*

To maximize the benefit of a bigger building, I was determined to get a commercial spray booth installed. Catch is I wanted to do it for under $3,000 and wanted a large booth. Apparently these things go for $15,000+ installed if going the brand new route.

After a week or so of scouring for sale ads, I located an ad on some obscure classified site the name of which I cannot recall. This was a 14×20 automotive booth that had been dismantled and left piled outside a barn. It didn't look pretty in the photos but galvanized steel weathers well and the critical components were stored inside (light fixtures and fan). At $1,200 it was the best deal I was going to find and that left enough money in the budget for duct and a vent cap.

After a phone call, the appointment to go buy it was made.

*Event #6*

Before pickup day, I skimmed Craigslist looking for other deals on items we needed. Located a mere 20 minutes from the booth was a 55 gallon Dayton drum vac going for $40. The business didn't have one and I lost my shop vac so we made an appointment to snag this deal too. The owner was unable to be onsite so we made special arrangements. He'd position the vac in a strategic location and we'd pick it up and leave 
the cash in a top-secret hiding place.

*Day Zero:*

We hitched up a rented flatbed trailer and headed out. There had been a lot of snow a few days back but plows are highly active in these parts so the highways were 100% cleared. Backroads not so much. I'm new to driving powerful [5.7 hemi rear wheel drive] trucks, new to hauling trailers and treating myself to a real-life episode of ice road truckers (more like dense-packed snow truckers). I suspect the trailer actually helped because the truck handled very well.

Murphy's law dictates that drum vacs are kept at the end of a 1-lane, 300 yard long driveway with a turn-around sized for a sedan. We got in easily. We got out too but only by jockeying the trailer into a 90 degree position, unhooking it, turning the truck around and re-hooking the trailer.

Murphy's law further dictates spray booths are located at the end of a 1-lane, 300 yard long driveway. But this was a horse stable so it was designed to bring trailers in and out. We didn't have an issue until we reached the road. The drive had a short rise just before the road and the truck couldn't get enough traction. The only way out was for my business partner to guide me through a running start down the drive and into the road. Apparently drivers didn't want to stop for him so he had to wait for a break in the traffic.

Nowadays I keep a yellow vest in my vehicle for those times I need to guide a truck into a road. It makes a big difference in the behavior of incoming drivers.


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## kelvancra (May 4, 2010)

Yep, on the drugs and equipment. Space cadets are a danger to themselves and, perhaps, others. Had a friend who was not allowed near the saws for his habits.



> "Random drug testing"
> 
> . . . Also, just a note. It definitely is a hazard to yourself and others to operate tools and machinery while impaired on drugs. Don't do it.
> 
> - DS


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## MadMark (Jun 3, 2014)

Worked in an amusement park one summer. They had this "maintenance" man (an old rummie) Pappy. He was a walking safety violation. The kind of guy that would clock you in the back of the head with a 2×4 on his shoulder if he turned as someone called his name. Just like Stan & Ollie. If you were working on a ride and Pappy started to climb up everyone else would climb down.

One day all the electric rides were down - no juice. Now for those of you that don't know, carnie rides use *big* polyphase motors.

Pappy sez "I'll check for power!", grabs a 110VAC bulb on a pigtail and before anyone can stop him he goes into the 440VAC three phase electric vault.

The door slowly swings closed and then there is a loud "bzzaap" and a moment later he comes out with a surprised look and smoke damage. He's holding the remains of the pigtails in each hand. The bulb portion is *gone.* After a few moments he nods his head and sez "Ayep, power we got."


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## DS (Oct 10, 2011)

"It's just a scratch"

One day, while working in the front office, I noticed Michael digging in the first aid cabinet holding his one hand with the other.

I recognized his one handed shuffle, as I had done it at least once in my career.

"Michael, are you okay?", I asked.

It's just a scratch, came the reply.

Let me see.

Michael really didn't want me to inspect his injury, except all on the job injuries are required to be documented for workman's compensation insurance.

Come to find out, Michael put his index finger into the jointer up to his first knuckle trying to do a boneheaded setup that should've never been attempted on a jointer.

I insisted on driving him to the urgent care, (by company policy).

Later we figured out why he didn't want to draw any attention to his fairly serious injury.
As a matter of policy, if you injure yourself on the job, it automatically triggers a drug test.

Michael tested off the charts for cocaine. (Literally pegged the top of the scale of the test)

He was offered rehab, but he chose to voluntarily terminate his employment instead.
We never saw Michael again.

We had a few serious injuries in those first couple of years, and every one of them involved drugs in some way.
Once we cleared up the drug issues in the shop, our safety record greatly improved.

The worst injury happened on another drug-induced improper setup that resulted in a full palm plant on top of a dado blade.
It was not anything nice.

I debated about posting this story here at all, because, I'd hoped to avoid turning this thread into a gore story festival.
This was merely meant it as an extra cautionary tale about the dangers of drug use and shop equipment - they don't mix well.

In all truth, drug addiction doesn't mix well with much of anything. Those who are afflicted with this do not have an easy life. I've seen the devastation it causes in the lives of the addict and their entire family.

If this describes you, or someone you love, I would encourage you to seek appropriate help and God bless.


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## woodbutcherbynight (Oct 21, 2011)

I have an addiction myself…............. keeping all my digits and such with my body, and working correctly. LOL


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## kelvancra (May 4, 2010)

I allow myself in my shop after one beer ONLY to shut off the lights.

My buddy likes pot, a lot. He was NEVER allowed to run the jointer, table saw and so on. He did get to run the drum-disk sander. His knuckle hurt for a week or two after that.


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## Knockonit (Nov 5, 2017)

many moons ago, my good friend took over his families paving and grading business, as the older son, he had not the chance to go to the big paper school, but little brother did, years pass and its time for the little one to come into the fold. 
first thing out off little brothers mouth was; we need to institute a drug screening for employees, older brother, who at this time had the biz wrapped nicely, doing well, expanding, ect. disagreed with little bro, but the ole man wanting the little guy to feel welcome said ok, 
a couple weeks go by and while having lunch with my friend, he says "well, today is the day we find out if so and so paving and grading is in biz, all but 3 employees tested positive for some drugs, (they had 39 employees), i kinda smirked as we all new coke was the drug of choice at that time and had to deal with it one way or another. 
his little bro didn't get it, that these employees, while coked up nite before, were doing a job that it was tough to find workers for that were legal, . Well they are still in business this day, been almost 30 years and we still get a kick outta little guy and his ideas when he first came on, not a fan of drug induced employees, but, it now seems we are at the cusp of another issue, Legalized mary jane, while i can say i did benefit when i did chemo for prostate cancer, was glad to not deal with it once i was on the final road to recovery, 
but here in 
Arizona the shops have lines out to the street or around the building, and now while driving in town, you smell it every where. 
crazy world, we live in, getting someone to work in the trades is almost impossible, me thinks the future is somewhat dim for some trades and businesses
Rj in az


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## bigblockyeti (Sep 9, 2013)

^ The legalized mary jane really isn't an issue, your workman's comp underwriter will give you two numbers, one if you're planning on employing people who will test positive for the new legal drug and another number if you're not planning on employing people who will test positive.
Guess which number is lower.


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## LeeRoyMan (Feb 23, 2019)

> I have an addiction myself…............. keeping all my digits and such with my body, and working correctly. LOL
> 
> - woodbutcherbynight


ADDICTED ?
:0


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## DS (Oct 10, 2011)

> ^ The legalized mary jane really isn t an issue, your workman s comp underwriter will give you two numbers, one if you re planning on employing people who will test positive for the new legal drug and another number if you re not planning on employing people who will test positive.
> Guess which number is lower.
> 
> - bigblockyeti


If you are interviewing for a job at a place knowingly employing drug users shouldn't the employer have to inform a prospective new employee of this policy of willingly hiring drug users?

And later, if you get seriously injured because of your coworkers impairment, doesn't that open up the employer to additional liability?

Something doesn't make much sense.
This is a strange new world.


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## DS (Oct 10, 2011)

"Right tool for the job"

Where I currently work, we have a gated yard behind the shop. Among other things, the boss keeps his 30' toy hauler back there.

One morning, we come in bright and early at 6am and it is gone.
We've had a break in.

Whoever is was, took some time to study things out as he was able to avoid being clearly identified by all the security cameras around the place. He backed his truck up the long drive to the gate rather than front in so his plate would not be on camera. 
He carefully walked backwards to and from his F150 and the gate so we couldn't capture his face. He also waited in his truck a few minutes for the motion sensors to turn off before sloooowly hitching up the trailer.

Just like that, he was gone with the purloined trailer and its ensconced toys.

For all his planning though, there was just one little thing he didn't count on.
The trailer, fully loaded, weighed over 14,000 lbs and the tow rating of his 1/2 ton F150 was only 7700 lbs.

He only got a little more than 1/2 mile down the road before his transmission went into failsafe mode and he had to abandon his bounty on the side of the road or destroy his truck by continuing on.

As it was, we got a phone call from someone, who knew my boss and his custom trailer, wanting to know why it was parked on the street out in front of his place.

The trailer, with its very expensive contents undisturbed, was recovered by 7am.

How many times have you heard the phrase, use the right tool for the job?
Maybe he should've stolen a F250 first, then gone after the trailer.


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## MadMark (Jun 3, 2014)

100th post!


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## DS (Oct 10, 2011)

You were waiting for that, weren't you?


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## MadMark (Jun 3, 2014)

Like watching the odometer turn over ...


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## LeeRoyMan (Feb 23, 2019)

OK I got a theft story as well. (sorry it's a bit long winded)

I had a 62' primmer grey Chevy long bed that I would leave at the shop. 
One morning we came in and both doors were gone. 
I had to drive it so I immediately whipped up a couple of wood doors. LOL

Turns out about 2 months earlier, while my guys were on a job installing, an employee there had asked my foreman if he wanted to sell the doors off the truck, duh. 
So I drove over to where the jobsite was but he wasn't there. 
Apparently he was working night shift. 
So that night I came back, I saw him on the road (driving a Chevy Truck) and followed him. He drove through several industrial complexes looking for stuff to steal I figured. I think he noticed someone following him and took off. I got stopped by a red light and he got away. So I was driving through the neighborhoods and spotted him parked at an apartment complex. Parked and walked up to the truck and confirmed the doors were mine although he had painted them primmer black, I had upholstered the door panels so I knew they were mine.

I went to a pay phone (no cell phones then) called the police, who had told me to call them if I found out anything. Police said if I didn't know which unit he was in they couldn't do anything.
I told them OK, I will take care of it myself. Police were there in 10 minutes or less. They went door to door, got the guy who also had warrants. They impounded the truck. 2 or 3 days later they called me and said I could come to the impound yard and collect my doors.
Goes without saying but when he got his truck back, he had a bit more to fix than just doors.

Had he never asked if we wanted to sell them we would have never found them. 
That was a great truck, wish I still had it just as a home work truck.


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## woodbutcherbynight (Oct 21, 2011)

> Like watching the odometer turn over ...
> 
> - Madmark2


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## woodbutcherbynight (Oct 21, 2011)

> OK I got a theft story as well. (sorry it s a bit long winded)
> 
> I had a 62 primmer grey Chevy long bed that I would leave at the shop.
> One morning we came in and both doors were gone.
> ...


I might have been very creative with what got left behind, like 10,000 fleas in the carpet. LOL


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## bigblockyeti (Sep 9, 2013)

14K is a little high when you're only rated for 7700. The scary thing is, the new '21 F150 when equipped properly can legally tow 14K!


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## 1thumb (Jun 30, 2012)

Shop I worked at years ago was owned by someone who had a cocaine habit and a very wealthy grandfather. Beautiful equipment. Brand new Komo cnc, and SCM double end tenoner ,s4s machine, planer and gang rip. For the 6-8 months I was there, the water, electricity and gas were shut off at different times for non-pay. Was winter when gas shut off. Building had gas heat.

The next morning was freezing cold. I ran the rough mill dept. Owner told me to set up and run panels. Clear mahogany and cypress. I told him it was too cold, glue wouldn't hold. He raised his voice, told me to do it. Then he sniffed, turned and walked away. I ran so many freaking panels it's not funny. Set a productivity record I'm sure. He had a monster Doucette clamp carrier maxed out w/arms and that machine didn't stop spinning and slamming onto the gate. I ran 100's panels if not more. Glue didn't hold on any of them. Threw all of them away. Don't do drugs kids.


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## DS (Oct 10, 2011)

"I've got Cindy for that"

When Forbes says your net worth is over $5 billion and you need to tax shelter a few million dollars, what do you do?

Well, this one client decided to add $290k worth of architectural millwork to his custom home in the Desert Highlands of North Scottsdale for starters.

He wasn't even adding any cabinets. We had already done his cabinet remodel a couple years earlier when the tax man wanted his due the last time.

No, this time it was almost all wall treatments. His Living Room was to look like the lobby of the nicest 5 star hotel you've ever been to.
The 12' high x 12' wide niches in the hallway received a 24" wide crown molding (yes 24" - not a typo) on three sides. Going up the left, over the top, and down the right side of the niche. This was to accentuate a freestanding sculpture that would stand in the center.
The dining room buffet would get a $22k mirror frame made with intersecting eclipses.
The 16' tall columns in the living room had sculpted corners in solid maple, and so on.

We were coordinating the project with Cindy, who I thought was the designer on the project.

On the day we met with the client to review drawings, he flew in from out of state and got right down to telling us what he wanted.
Me, being the engineering technical type began to discuss some of the issues we would have to overcome to do what he wanted.
He put up his hand to me in a stop gesture and said, "I've got Cindy for that." And he got up and left to catch a plane out of there.

Turns out that Cindy is one of his many personal executive assistants and her job is to work through any problems that might arise so that he can get what he wants.

And that is when I recognized the difference between millionaires and billionaires. 
Most millionaires I've done work for can still oversee solving problems on a day to day basis, but billionaires have a "Cindy for that", if not a dozen "Cindy's"

Now I need to go out in the backyard, pull weeds from my garden and vacuum the swimming pool.
(Just reaffirming my thousandaire status to stay grounded.)


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## MadMark (Jun 3, 2014)

Was a teen helping the old man rip about 4" off an 18" square of 1/2" ply - on the 10" Craftsman RAS.

He was about 4" into the rip when the RAS grabbed the sheet of ply out of his hands and impaled it, *BANG!*, corner on, into the garage door.

My father was bent over gripping his hand and sucking his teeth saying "I'm *glad* it hurts! I'm *GLAD* it *HURTS!* It means they're *STILL THERE!*"

The sides of his fingers were scraped by the ply and *not* the BLADE! Very painful but no real damage.

When I looked at the piece you could see the kerf was OK at first and then got ragged and began to curve. At the end you could see each tooth of the blade hitting one at a time. Means the piece was moving at the rotational speed of a 10" disk (31-1/2" circ) spinning at 3600 rpm is … umm … you do the math.


10" dia x pi / 12" per foot x (3600 rpm / 60 secs / min) ~ 160 fps. 
Simplifying: 2.62' (31-1/2") circumference x 60 rps = 157.5 fps
60 mph = 88 fps, 120 mph = 176 fps.
So 160 fps is about 10% less than 120 mph (176 fps) or call it 110 *MPH!*


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## CaptainKlutz (Apr 23, 2014)

> "I've got Cindy for that" - DS


LOL

We labeled those bosses as using 'seagull' management style.

They randomly fly into town, eat the best food, crap all over everything, and fly away; 
leaving a giant mess to be cleaned up by rest of us.

+1 When I came home from week of cleaning up the mess; had to mow the lawn and clean pool too. 

Cheers!


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## LeeRoyMan (Feb 23, 2019)

You guys have pools? 
Lucky dogs…..


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## kelvancra (May 4, 2010)

The Beatles said it best: I'm a believer…


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## kelvancra (May 4, 2010)

> "I've got Cindy for that"
> 
> . . . . .
> 
> - DS


We can only imagine.


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## Pixxture (Mar 16, 2018)

This two question quiz is just to show how dumb some drug rules are.

The manufacturing plant I worked at had just instituted a new drug policy. New employees were required to pass a drug screen. Current employees were grandfathered, they did not have to get a drug test UNLESS they became injured in an industrial accident.
As fate would have it we had an engineer who never swore or drank, and obviously never used drugs. One day as the Engineer worked at his desk a plumber started to work directly above his desk. The plumber was hidden from the engineer as he worked above the suspended ceiling. Well the plumber dropped a pipe through the ceiling, knocking out the engineer.
1. Using common sense who dropped the pipe and should have been drug tested?
2. Under company rules who was injured and therefore was required to get a drug test or be terminated?


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## woodbutcherbynight (Oct 21, 2011)

> You guys have pools?
> Lucky dogs…..
> 
> - LeeRoyMan


I thought the same thing.


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## CaptainKlutz (Apr 23, 2014)

> You guys have pools? Lucky dogs….. - LeeRoyMan


pfft… 
Pool ownership numbers in Phoenix are huge.

Random internet search found this data point: 6 Phoenix suburbs were in top 10 for pool ownership n 2015.

From 2015 Realtor.com survey on pool ownership:

Coral Springs, Florida - 66 percent
*Scottsdale, Arizona - 62 percent*
*Tempe, Arizona - 46 percent*
*Chandler, Arizona - 40 percent*
*Glendale, Arizona - 37 percent*
*Gilbert, Arizona - 37 percent*
Clearwater, Florida - 32 percent
Clovis, California - 32 percent
*Mesa, Arizona - 31 percent*
Plano, Texas - 31 percent

Not a big deal to have a pool in AZ. 
Is more of problem when you do not have one, if you ask SWMBO and kids! 
Cost me less to build a pool on a new house I built 15 years ago, than wiring a 2 car garage sub panel and stuffing it full of 3HP wood working machines! :-(0)

Perspective might help. It is forecast to reach 97° this coming weekend. 
Yes, that is 1st weekend in April and nearly 100°. 
Having a pool is often the only way to keep your sanity in Arizona.

YMMV


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## DS (Oct 10, 2011)

I think the pool adds only about 10k to 15k to the appraised value of the house.

We also bought this house on.a short sale for a fraction of its previous market value, so basically, free pool. (If such a thing can exist, as pools need lots of maintenance)

If I were a multi-thousandaire I could perhaps hire someone to clean it for me.


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## DS (Oct 10, 2011)

> You guys have pools?
> Lucky dogs…..
> 
> - LeeRoyMan


It is far better to have a friendly neighbor with a pool than to have your own pool.

Hindsight, 20-20, and all that jazz.


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## DS (Oct 10, 2011)

> This two question quiz is just to show how dumb some drug rules are.
> 
> The manufacturing plant I worked at had just instituted a new drug policy. New employees were required to pass a drug screen. Current employees were grandfathered, they did not have to get a drug test UNLESS they became injured in an industrial accident.
> As fate would have it we had an engineer who never swore or drank, and obviously never used drugs. One day as the Engineer worked at his desk a plumber started to work directly above his desk. The plumber was hidden from the engineer as he worked above the suspended ceiling. Well the plumber dropped a pipe through the ceiling, knocking out the engineer.
> ...


Yes, it can seem backwards at times.
My boss was walking through the shop once about the time a board was thrown from the table saw across the shop. He got sliced by the board on his hand and needed a couple of stitches…. and a drug test.

He came back clean. The table saw operator wasn't tested.
I agree. It definitely seems backwards at times.


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## bigblockyeti (Sep 9, 2013)

I'm sure most of it is driven by workman's comp underwriters. You wanna play, you gotta play by their rules.


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## xeddog (Mar 2, 2010)

> You guys have pools?
> Lucky dogs…..
> 
> - LeeRoyMan


I wouldn't say "lucky". I had a pool put in back in about 1987. It RARELY get used any more, and needs repairs that will cost more than the pool did originally. The plaster is now needing to be repaired/replaced, tile has cracked and some is missing pieces, the mortar in the coping is missing pieces, The surround is cracked and needs replacing, and the filter needs to be replaced. My cheapest alternative might just be having it removed and the hole filled.

Wayne


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## controlfreak (Jun 29, 2019)

I remember a large employer nearby was getting ready to have a large layoff of workers. A week prior they had a surprise drug test on all workers. They fired all positive results so they could determine the exact number of layoffs needed to meet their goal.


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## Peteybadboy (Jan 23, 2013)

I'm in s/w fla. a pool is a must.

Kelly I think "I'm a believer" was by the Monkees. Neil Diamond wrote it.


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## kelvancra (May 4, 2010)

The memory is the other thing that goes….


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## DS (Oct 10, 2011)

They are now forecasting 99°F this Sunday in Phoenix.

Sounds to me like it's time to open the pool up for the season and tune up the cooler for the garage shop.


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## DS (Oct 10, 2011)

"Impossible requests"

It seems that I get impossible requests on a near daily basis.
Usually there is a way around whatever issue comes up.

"You need to choose what is more important to you, a 60" walkway between the range and the island, or centering the fridge on the island" 
I heard myself say that this last week. Of course, they want both, physics be damned.
If I were a "Q", (sttng reference), I would just change the gravitational constant of the universe with the flick of my wrist and problem solved.

Perhaps you could cleave the planet in two right down the center of your kitchen and extend the globe to give an extra two feet to make it happen? (Thought, but not said out loud, of course)

Most times it is the proverbial 10 pounds of … stuff, in a 5 pound bag, type of problem.

You want a rollout shelf, a trash can and an organizer caddy under the kitchen sink? 
Did you forget about the garbage disposal and the water purifier under there too?

If only I had an interphasic cloaking device like the one that allowed the Enterprise to fly through a solid rock asteroid and evade the Romulons, I could make all of this stuff fit under there. 
I mean, "Let me see what I can do", are the words that actually come out of my mouth.

My other favorite is the squirrel and moose. "Hey Rocky, watch me pull a rabbit out of my, uh,... hat. Ah, Bullwinkle that never works"

In the end, physics reign true and it is us humans that have to compromise and live within the rules of the three dimensional universe.

Maybe the pullout trash can go in the cabinet to the side of the sink. 
Down from 10 lbs to 8. 
Just three more lbs to go, to figure out how to fit it all in there.

It's gonna be a long day, again.


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## MadMark (Jun 3, 2014)

Was teaching woodworking 101 at Woodcraft demonstrating tablesaw use. They had a factory stock PM66 with blade guard & anti-kickback pawls and standard (not *ZCI*) throat plate.

Was taking thin truing rip from 2' or so piece of 1×6 stock. Offcut got tangled in guard/pawls and started to swing. Could hear ting, ting, ting as offcut touched blade tip. I hollered "*Get DOWN!*" and hit STOP. As everyone (who had gathered round to observe) ducked, the piece chattered fully into the blade and exited the saw with a loud *Ker-chang!* flying across the room!

I explained the need and safety benefits of a ZCI while sneering at the supposed "safety" device that had *caused* instead of preventing a kickback.


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## kelvancra (May 4, 2010)

IRONY at its finest.


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## LeeRoyMan (Feb 23, 2019)

> Was teaching woodworking 101 at Woodcraft demonstrating tablesaw use. They had a factory stock PM66 with blade guard & anti-kickback pawls and standard (not *ZCI*) throat plate.
> 
> Was taking thin truing rip from 2 or so piece of 1×6 stock. Offcut got tangled in guard/pawls and started to swing. Could hear ting, ting, ting as offcut touched blade tip. I hollered "*Get DOWN!*" and hit STOP. As everyone (who had gathered round to observe) ducked, the piece chattered fully into the blade and exited the saw with a loud *Ker-chang!* flying across the room!
> 
> ...


As being an instructor, you should have seen this coming and did more to protect the students around you.
You don't cut off 2 fingers then tell them that's why you need a push stick.


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## pottz (Sep 15, 2015)

> Was teaching woodworking 101 at Woodcraft demonstrating tablesaw use. They had a factory stock PM66 with blade guard & anti-kickback pawls and standard (not *ZCI*) throat plate.
> 
> Was taking thin truing rip from 2 or so piece of 1×6 stock. Offcut got tangled in guard/pawls and started to swing. Could hear ting, ting, ting as offcut touched blade tip. I hollered "*Get DOWN!*" and hit STOP. As everyone (who had gathered round to observe) ducked, the piece chattered fully into the blade and exited the saw with a loud *Ker-chang!* flying across the room!
> 
> ...


+1 may i asume that all those watching had on proper safety glasses at least.if im at a demo the last thing i wanna hear is the instructor yell *get down*!!! you would never see me at another one.


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## MadMark (Jun 3, 2014)

What should have been done differently?

Standard safety guards were in place, saw was configured *stock* just as 1000's of other woodworkers receive it. ZCI wasn't available on "demonstration" saw.

Riving knife/splitter was in place. Offcut was 1/8" or so and narrower than the spacing between the splitter and the anti-kickback pawls. The piece got tangled *in* the pawls (which were very sloppy).

A ZCI absolutely would have prevented the issue by keeping the end of the cut off from dropping in between the throat plate and blade.

So, where was the error (other than the ZCI)?


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## Novamr99 (Oct 9, 2020)

Operator error. 100%. You made a cut that you KNEW couldn't be made safely without a ZCI. If you push the green button on any machine, you are responsible for the outcome. You should have checked and seen there was no ZCI and not made the cut. And don't go sneering at the "supposed safety devise" in front of those there to learn. It has its purpose and will save fingers in the future unless instructors discourage its use.


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## controlfreak (Jun 29, 2019)

Not knowing where people were located around the saw but I would be nervous that "get down" may cause someone to lower their face into the path. I wasn't there so I am not passing judgment.


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## DS (Oct 10, 2011)

If I am at that class, personally, I am not standing behind the saw, regardless.


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## pottz (Sep 15, 2015)

> If I am at that class, personally, I am not standing behind the saw, regardless.
> 
> - DS


ditto everyone should have been off to the side.and as novamr99 stated knowing the issue and still proceeding was careless.


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## Foghorn (Jan 30, 2020)

Reminds me of the Berenstain bears!


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## woodbutcherbynight (Oct 21, 2011)

> You don t cut off 2 fingers then tell them that s why you need a push stick.
> 
> - LeeRoyMan


Hmm, so I have been doing this all wrong. Dmkit!!!


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## pottz (Sep 15, 2015)

> You don t cut off 2 fingers then tell them that s why you need a push stick.
> 
> - LeeRoyMan
> 
> ...


i told you-lol.


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## woodbutcherbynight (Oct 21, 2011)

> Hmm, so I have been doing this all wrong. Dmkit!!!
> 
> - woodbutcherbynight
> 
> ...


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## DS (Oct 10, 2011)

Back in the mid 80's I had my very first table saw, a rickety craftsman table top version, and my very first lathe - also a Craftsman table top unit.

It was Christmas Eve day and I was just finishing up a hope chest as a gift for my sister.

Just because I wanted to try out my new lathe, the chest corners, of course, had to have turnings.
Now I just had to to fit a round turning on the corner of a square box by notching it out.

My posts were square at the top and bottom job the box but had a trumpet style foot turned below the box for a leg.
I didn't want to notch the foot, so I elected to do a sketchy cut by stopping the cut short of the foot and lifting it off of the blade.
The complimentary cut was dropped slowly onto the blade above the foot and finished out of the piece.

This of course worked fine for the first three legs, but while dropping the last leg onto the blade, internal stress bound the blade and threw the piece.
This had the effect of pulling my hand back into the blade.

(In hindsight I should have made it in two pieces so the foot was separate from the corner and a basic cut was all that would be needed)

I got only a brief glimpse of the hamburger that used to be the fingers on my left hand before covering it with a shop rag and applying pressure.

At that time, I was still single and was staying at my parents house for a time, just after moving back from Europe where I had lived for a couple of years. I went in and found my father who took me to the emergency room at the local hospital.

Of course, being Christmas Eve, service at the ER was less than stellar. The A team was off enjoying the holiday as was likely most of the B team.
The C team physicians mostly were on call with only a single attending nurse at the ER that night.

They didn't even triage me after three hours had passed.
My dad was getting up to give the attending nurse a piece of his mind when they wheeled in a man to the ER who had just managed to blow most of his left shoulder off with a shotgun. What a gory sight that was.

All of the sudden, my hand didn't hurt so much.

As it turned out, my hand wasn't as bad as it could've been.
I managed to cut off the fingernails on my first three fingers and dice up the side of my index finger, but it all would heal without any visible damage.

As a side effect, though, I can now pick up hot things with my left hand.

When we left a couple hours later, the attending was still making phone calls to try and find a surgeon who would come in on Christmas Eve pro Bono to fix that guy up as he didn't have any insurance coverage.

Sometimes you learn the hard way to respect the tools in your shop.
I am always taking the little bit extra time to check my setups before mak8ng a cut, and not afraid to abandon a bad idea regardless of how much time I have in it already.

BTW, My sister loved the hope chest, belated as it was after Christmas.
She still uses it some 36 years later.


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## DS (Oct 10, 2011)

"It's gonna take longer than you think"

My children are grown these days with families of their own, but, it is still nice when they decide they want some shop time with Dad.

Often times, I end up having to ground them in reality a bit, when, for example my son thought I could whip him up a custom office desk in a weekend. 
I told him to go look at the desk in my office. 
It is a yard sale desk - a nice one, mind you, but, I bought for less than the cost of a single sheet of Oak plywood.

Someday, maybe, I will build my custom desk and then my son's after that.
We built a head board for his bed instead. 
It turned out great.

This last weekend, my youngest daughter wanted to build a small shelf for books to go by her bedside.
I asked her how long she thought it might take and " A couple of hours" was the reply. "It's a simple shelf, after all."

It's gonna take longer than you think.

We had a great time. Despite her early trepidation, she learned how to safely use a table saw, then a band saw.
She learned how to manually edge plywood.

Every time we went into the garage, we would do about 20 minutes worth of work and only after coming into the house to take a break, did we realize that two hours had passed without us noticing.
This repeated several times that day.

We ended up taking lunch and dinner breaks before we finished.
As much as she wanted a shelf for her bedside, we genuinely had lots of fun spending time together in the shop.
I couldn't be happier.


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## DS (Oct 10, 2011)

"Left, Right, whatever"

Just had to remake part of a custom closet.

There were two windows which were up high, but slightly off center of the room.
There was a wood top under the windows and 10' tall cabinets on either side of the windows to the corners.

Turns out if you make field measurements and your drawing is oriented differently from the room, it is easy to get the left and right dimensions backwards.

It might had been an easy fix except the corners were "L" shaped and different sizes due to the windows being shifted off center.
Had to mirror the two tall corners (new cabinets) and switch sides.

It was not discovered until the installer was in the room with the cabinets trying to lay it out.

I hate when that happens.

At least the boss will get to vent his frustration by smashing the old cabinets to bits in the dumpster.
(Did I mention before how much fun it is working for millennials?)


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## woodbutcherbynight (Oct 21, 2011)

> (Did I mention before how much fun it is working for millennials?)
> 
> - DS


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## pottz (Sep 15, 2015)

> (Did I mention before how much fun it is working for millennials?)
> 
> - DS
> 
> ...


probably about as much fun as having them work for you ! did i say how much im looking forward too retirement ?


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## sras (Oct 31, 2009)

DS - these are really good stories


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## MadMark (Jun 3, 2014)

Back in the 70's paneling was all the rage. We were cutting a very tricky piece, on a staircase with an outlet. After over an hour of measuring and cutting and fiddling we were ready for the test fit. It was *perfect* ... other than being wrong side out!

The replacement easy to cut as we had a perfect template.


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## woodbutcherbynight (Oct 21, 2011)

> Back in the 70 s paneling was all the rage. We were cutting a very tricky piece, on a staircase with an outlet. After over an hour of measuring and cutting and fiddling we were ready for the test fit. It was *perfect* ... other than being wrong side out!
> 
> The replacement easy to cut as we had a perfect template.
> 
> - Madmark2


Done that once, decided I had enough for the day and had a beer while I pondered Life, the Universe, and Everything.

LOL


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## DS (Oct 10, 2011)

"McMansions"

A current trend right now has many folks from California uprooting and settling in the Metro Phoenix area.
Compared to the real estate prices in California, our prices must seem very affordable.

We have a builder who has been pumping out $1.2 million to $2.0 million homes to cater to this crowd.
They have the most enormous kitchens I have ever worked on.

I am designing the fourth such McMansion's cabinetry (18 rooms worth) right now.
After the blueprints, the appliance list is the next piece of crucial information needed to put these designs together.

Here is a peek at the actual appliance invoice total of this most recent McMansion.










Then there is the cost of the cabinets on top of that.

This house will be using PET high gloss white laminates throughout (not inexpensive)

For all the hullabaloo around people out of work, people unwilling to work because they make more money being unemployed, etcetera, I can honestly say I have never been busier trying to keep up with the orders coming in.


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## splintergroup (Jan 20, 2015)

I visited the nearest "exotic wood" store today just to see how stock and prices are doing. Really nothing surprising, just modest increases. Problem seed to be that I also caught myself admiring the 6×6 and 2×4 pine elements of the shelving, thinking that would make for some fine "Early American" projects. Kinda creeped me out =8^0

Your appliance invoice is more than my entire house was in 1998!


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## pottz (Sep 15, 2015)

> "McMansions"
> 
> A current trend right now has many folks from California uprooting and settling in the Metro Phoenix area.
> Compared to the real estate prices in California, our prices must seem very affordable.
> ...


yeah it's not uncommon here in la la land for just the kitchens too exceed half a million.and most will never see a frying pan in use.


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## DS (Oct 10, 2011)

The Kitchen Island is 6' x 20'.
The Kitchen range wall is 16' tall and 36' wide.
Cabinets to 10' high, all in Mirlux high gloss white laminate.


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## pottz (Sep 15, 2015)

> The Kitchen Island is 6' x 20'.
> The Kitchen range wall is 16' tall and 36' wide.
> Cabinets to 10' high, all in Mirlux high gloss white laminate.
> 
> - DS


whatever makes the cook happy i guess.im sure world class goumet food will be produced-lol.


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## MadMark (Jun 3, 2014)

... and the only appliances that get used are:

can opener for pet food
microwave for popcorn
kuereg (sp?) for coffee


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## Wood_Scraps (Jan 31, 2021)

> "McMansions"
> 
> A current trend right now has many folks from California uprooting and settling in the Metro Phoenix area.
> Compared to the real estate prices in California, our prices must seem very affordable.
> ...


Hopefully the CA refugees don't forget the reasons they fled and bring those same problems to AZ.


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## DS (Oct 10, 2011)

> ... and the only appliances that get used are:
> * can opener for pet food
> * microwave for popcorn
> * kuereg (sp?) for coffee
> ...


You are actually right on the mark, Mark.

Kitchens like this are used more for social gatherings than actually preparing food.
With everything spread out like it is, cooking is less efficient anyways.

It seems silly to buy a $16k range and not cook on it.
It is as much of a status symbol as an appliance.
People with that much money don't usually do their own cooking.

And it is a Miele built in coffee machine, not a Keureg. Makes expressos and lattes at the touch of a button.


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## woodbutcherbynight (Oct 21, 2011)

> ... and the only appliances that get used are:
> * can opener for pet food
> * microwave for popcorn
> * kuereg (sp?) for coffee
> ...


And those get used by the maid at that


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## woodbutcherbynight (Oct 21, 2011)

> ... and the only appliances that get used are:
> 
> can opener for pet food
> microwave for popcorn
> ...


I have one of those. Just a coffee maker with a On / Off button.

LOL


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## pottz (Sep 15, 2015)

> ... and the only appliances that get used are:
> 
> can opener for pet food
> microwave for popcorn
> ...


your right no real chef would ever design a kitchen like that,way too much walking between appliances.commercial kitchens are galley style for efficiency.


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## kelvancra (May 4, 2010)

Worked on a seven million dollar home tied to a land trust (they paid way too much for too little). The kitchen stove was a gas unit and was always on. You just lifted lids to access burners. It cost about a grand a month to run the absurd thing.



> . . . .
> 
> It seems silly to buy a $16k range and not cook on it.
> It is as much of a status symbol as an appliance.
> ...


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## pottz (Sep 15, 2015)

these aga stoves run about 25k for something like this and are always on.hey ya never know when you might get the urge to get up at 3am and make an omlet ?


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## DS (Oct 10, 2011)

This is the one they have. 60" unit. (13' tall vent hood and chimney above it)
This would be fun to cook on for sure.
Probably won't happen for me in my lifetime. 
Too many other places to spend the $16k.

$16k buys a lot of take out. Just sayin'


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## MadMark (Jun 3, 2014)

> ... It is as much of a status symbol as an appliance …
> 
> - DS


There are posers everywhere.

A 6'x20' isn't an island, it's a subcontinent! On average its a 26' walk (11 steps) from one side to the other. Betcha the stove and sink are on opposite sides of that behemoth of an "island" with the fridge and microwave at opposite ends! Designed for show, not use. (There's a *tiny* kitchen in the basement with a little old Sicilian grandma that does all the actual cooking.)

I'm an old MC biker. We sneer at RUB's (Rich Urban Biker's) who's Harleys are out of warranty before they are out of break-in … These bikes are "garage queens", they are nice and spotless and highly polished and never ridden. They are more chrome art than functional motorcycles. Have seen bikes encased in a lexan box strapped to a chrome trailer with show lights that are only for show and never ridden. The bikes at the bike contest that aren't street legal (no mirrors, lights, horn, etc.) *Bah!*

Saw a pic of someone's "shop" that was a showroom for Delta tools. No wear on the router bits, no dust on the sanding belts or on the inside of the clear DC tubing, etc.

See pics here now and then of *huge* extravagantly equipped home shops completely devoid of dust, wear, or any other evidence of use. Everyone here suggests "wheels for everything" except for all the crap screwed to the walls in enclosed cabs in the "perfect" shops. They're *perfect* because they don't get used.

The "working" shops I've ever been in (mine included) are in a constant state of disarray as a busy shop rolls from one job to another. Just enough cleaning is done to maintain safety. Tools are kept where they're needed, not stored away in dust proof showcase.

A spotless shop is an idle shop.


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## controlfreak (Jun 29, 2019)

I have a friend who put a massive island in but it has no appliances or sink in it. It was more for entertaining and gathering around. It worked well for that purpose. I have a small island and always will.


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## LeeRoyMan (Feb 23, 2019)

> The "working" shops I ve ever been in (mine included) are in a constant state of disarray as a busy shop rolls from one job to another. Just enough cleaning is done to maintain safety. Tools are kept where they re needed, not stored away in dust proof showcase.
> 
> A spotless shop is an idle shop.
> 
> - Madmark2


I get why you say that, but it's just simply not true.

A clean organized shop is a productive shop. 
No way I could make money out of your shop.
Half the day would be moving stuff around to work and the other half a day would be trying to find things.

I agree that there are posers with showcase shops, but most working shops are clean and organized.

Every shop goes through phases during a job, 
getting messed up but then cleaned again. 
It's a viscous cycle.

Also, just because you have the money to afford a "Garage Queen" doesn't make it a bad thing.
Not everybody has to be a broken down biker in order to ride and enjoy life.


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## pottz (Sep 15, 2015)

> ... It is as much of a status symbol as an appliance …
> 
> - DS
> 
> ...


good example of that check out a video called (tymes magical dustless woodshop) on you tube.no magic needed if you dont do anything there is no dust.he talks about all the projects he has going on but only shows one little match stick box.


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## pottz (Sep 15, 2015)

> The "working" shops I ve ever been in (mine included) are in a constant state of disarray as a busy shop rolls from one job to another. Just enough cleaning is done to maintain safety. Tools are kept where they re needed, not stored away in dust proof showcase.
> 
> A spotless shop is an idle shop.
> 
> ...


i agree on that my shop isn't spotless but it's kept pretty clean,after the day ends it gets cleaned up and tools put away where they belong.


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## DS (Oct 10, 2011)

Whenever I start a new project in my home shop, there are actually two projects.

The first is to dig out from under the clutter remaining from the previous project and whatever miscellany has gathered on top of the tools. 
Then, the actual project can begin.

It is a bad habit, I know, but it seems no one offers rehab for it.
(If they did offer it, it would probably take an intervention to get me to go)

Somehow, cleaning the garage always ends up as the low priority until it is needed again.


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## JackDuren (Oct 10, 2015)

After 10 years and 10 million a year Jakobe Furniture went under. Luckily I retired before this. Now I'm just waiting for the auction…


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## controlfreak (Jun 29, 2019)

> After 10 years and 10 million a year Jakobe Furniture went under. Luckily I retired before this. Now I m just waiting for the auction…
> 
> - JackDuren


What got them from $10 million a year to zero Jack? I am not in the wood or cabinet business but as a business owner I am always interested in what happened.


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## LeeRoyMan (Feb 23, 2019)

> After 10 years and 10 million a year Jakobe Furniture went under. Luckily I retired before this. Now I m just waiting for the auction…
> 
> - JackDuren
> 
> ...


Jack retired…..lol


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## woodbutcherbynight (Oct 21, 2011)

> After 10 years and 10 million a year Jakobe Furniture went under. Luckily I retired before this. Now I m just waiting for the auction…
> 
> - JackDuren
> 
> ...


Probably truth to that. Or at the least he mentioned taking a week off…..


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## bigblockyeti (Sep 9, 2013)

Seems like there still would have been a plan of succession in place with a business that's managed that level of cash flow for that long. Or did he retire and take all the liquid assets with him?


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## DS (Oct 10, 2011)

I've seen it before.
The old man ran his furniture biz for over 40 years. 
None of his kids wanted anything to do with running it. 
The market for selling it wasn't favorable and the old man's health wasn't cooperating much either.

Not many choices and not much caring about the money when facing one's own mortality.

Sometimes we tell ourselves we're doing it for our family, for our children, etc.
But when the children have no interest, or, relationships fail, priorities change.

Life is a funny, funny thing.


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## JackDuren (Oct 10, 2015)

> After 10 years and 10 million a year Jakobe Furniture went under. Luckily I retired before this. Now I m just waiting for the auction…
> 
> - JackDuren
> 
> ...


They were a restaurant seating and table store… Chilli's, outback, bars, etc… I tried for 7 years to get them to add or have differentered directions. Guess there rethinking now…

I'm on full time disability..I get payed to do nothing. Working and fishing optional…lol


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## JackDuren (Oct 10, 2015)

> Seems like there still would have been a plan of succession in place with a business that s managed that level of cash flow for that long. Or did he retire and take all the liquid assets with him?
> 
> - bigblockyeti


He also has polystone. Another company that is doing well, but small. He has a few buildings, the owner isn't hurting..


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## JackDuren (Oct 10, 2015)

https://www.jakobefurniture.com/

I found there to be a huge gap between cabinet makers and furniture makers


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## JackDuren (Oct 10, 2015)

https://www.jakobefurniture.com/


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## DS (Oct 10, 2011)

> https://www.jakobefurniture.com/
> 
> I found there to be a huge gap between cabinet makers and furniture makers
> 
> - JackDuren


What is this gap you refer to?

Maybe there is a gap from production cabinetry to furniture…
But in custom cabinetry and furniture I have dealt with most all of the same things that I saw on that web site.

Chairs are a different animal, but if you are set up for it, chairs can do well too.

Quite often people have us build booth seating on the backside of a kitchen island. I don't get it. But, we build them a couple times a year. I do it the same as when I was doing commercial restaurant booths.

I am interested in what you perceive as "the gap"


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## JackDuren (Oct 10, 2015)

> https://www.jakobefurniture.com/
> 
> I found there to be a huge gap between cabinet makers and furniture makers
> 
> ...


I didn't build booths unless they had expensive veneers. That wasnt my department. I was in the high end department.

There is a much higher skill set for furniture than cabinets…

I did commercial and residential cabinets from 1983-2013. Furniture from 2013-2020.


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## DS (Oct 10, 2011)

> There is a much higher skill set for furniture than cabinets…
> 
> - JackDuren


As a general statement, I agree. There are different skill sets needed throughout the shop.
But, I think every shop needs that guy who has a very high skill set to handle the more challenging pieces.


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## JackDuren (Oct 10, 2015)

> There is a much higher skill set for furniture than cabinets…
> 
> - JackDuren
> 
> ...


That was me. I spent years moving looking for higher pay. At some point as a cabinet maker your not really learning anymore, your looking rank, pay and benefits.

Many pieces are priced and sold before you see it. So a production background can help..

Cabinet makers….. only a few move forward. Even I have furniture makers that pass me running in skill.


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## JackDuren (Oct 10, 2015)

Even as a furniture maker you still have pieces that reflect a past back ground. Because I moved up to furniture doesn't mean I don't still do cabinetry.. cabinetry is my roots..


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## 1thumb (Jun 30, 2012)

$10m gross sales needs alot of money to feed that beast. Stop it cold or sell it is when you as an individual reap rewards.


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## JackDuren (Oct 10, 2015)

I think at one time they employed about 150 people.

The Covid money I believe helped it for the last year. I talked to one of the plant leads and he says it closed for good he thinks. When a company like Chilli's stop putting in stores that's your bread and butter..

When I had my cabinet shop I relied on the economy, when the Ballon popped, so did my builders…I had to pay bills so I found a commercial job…

Cabinet shops stress over the economy all the time. Every shop I know is swamped right now. When that covid money is gone we will see what happens after that..

With the rise of prices and uncertain future who knows what's in store cabinet shops..


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## DS (Oct 10, 2011)

So, this happened yesterday.

A project that we installed back in March 2019 has been hanging around for a while. The house is taking its time finishing up and they keep finding things about their cabinets that they want to change.

It is a fairly big house with 14 rooms of cabinetry including 3 full bars.
Of course a full bar in a residence tends to incite the 10 lbs of you-know-what in a 5 lbs bag type of problems.

The great room bar is the smallest of the three. It is has a bar back a short side run and the main front bar, just like you would expect. Well, they didn't like the placement of the ice maker in the short side run and they wanted to add a storage space in the blind corner for CO2 canisters, because, hey, who doesn't like Coca-cola on tap?

So, there are only 3 things on this wall - A pull out trash can, the ice maker and the CO2 cabinet.
Mind you, this was installed over two years ago per the original plan.
I've revised the plans for the proposed changes 7 or 8 times already and they haven't been happy.

Well, yesterday, they finally settled on the final version.
Perfect! I said, This is nearly exactly what we installed already!
All we need to do is trade places with the trash and the ice maker and we are done!

Nope.

Why not?

Some time ago, when they decided they didn't like it, the client removed the cabinets in that run and discarded them.

We have to make them over again.

#FirstWorldProblems
#EntitledClients


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## DS (Oct 10, 2011)

"Burning bridges"

My first job in Woodworking, as I've described before, was in a cabinet shop for a builder who built retirement homes.
In addition to his own projects, we took other builder's projects as well.

After seeing a couple of on the job injuries and seeing the OSHA stats on woodworkers versus injured digits, I decided maybe the office might be a better place to work.

The old codger doing the purchasing for the shop eventually retired and I had worked my way through the shop and stood out as a good candidate for the position and so I applied for the position.

I quickly got indoctrinated in the FIFO inventory system and learned that if I didn't keep stock levels up enough the shop wouldn't be able to function.
Lots of new lessons in the operation of a shop that the average woodworker might miss out on in the shop.

The middle-aged designer in the office was sage beyond his years and took me under his wing. 
He taught me the ropes.

I remember he claimed he only worked there to keep the IRS happy.
Later I found out he had his own shop for over a decade and when things started going south, he hadn't withheld enough to pay his taxes, so he claimed he worked there primarily to show W-2 income for the IRS to stay off his back while he worked on the side in his own workshop.
Our desks were right next to each other in the office.

One day, as his client appointment was coming up the stairs to enter the office, he leaned over and confided in me that he took the standard bid and doubled it.
I sensed another lesson coming on.

I watched as the builder got predictably upset at the number and steamed off down the stairs.
As he was leaving, I leaned over and asked why he doubled it and demanded the project be 100 percent prepaid.
He told me, "Don't worry, he'll be back".

Turns out, that this builder was not very fair with his vendors. 
He'd slow paid and no paid his way around town enough times that he had earned a bad reputation among his suppliers.
That is when I learned that if you really don't want to do a project, you just imagine a crazy number at which point you will put up with the trouble if you actually get the bid and if you don't get the bid, you didn't want it anyways.

Sure enough, about a week and a half later, after the builder shopped our bid around town, he came back in and gave us the job at the crazy price.
Seems that if you burn enough bridges, the crazy 2x price can actually become the lowest bid in town.

So many lessons I learned there…


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## Desert_Woodworker (Jan 28, 2015)

20 years ago to today, the PHX cabinet shops have changed dramatically. From the 2 man cabinet shop to modernized shops with the technical shops of today.. with better finishes…

Yet both share the type of customers that you share with your stories…

I have been blessed with accepting technology and have accepted to a point the modern cabinet business or 2021…

Ps To: DS I added a Laguna laser to my repertoire…


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## LeeRoyMan (Feb 23, 2019)

Whenever I meet a new client it's always a job interview. But it goes both ways. The client may be sizing me up to see if they want me to do the work, but at the same time I am trying to figure them out as well. 
It's usually pretty easy to tell when they're going to be a PITA. 
So there always is the PITA clause for those clients.

Surprised how often they pay the increase. I just figure they must know they are a pain to work for. lol
Or they have more money than they need.


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## woodbutcherbynight (Oct 21, 2011)

> Whenever I meet a new client it s always a job interview. But it goes both ways. The client may be sizing me up to see if they want me to do the work, but at the same time I am trying to figure them out as well.
> It s usually pretty easy to tell when they re going to be a PITA.
> So there always is the PITA clause for those clients.
> 
> ...


I often refer to this as the annoyance factor.


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## DS (Oct 10, 2011)

> Ps To: DS I added a Laguna laser to my repertoire…
> 
> - Desert_Woodworker


I noticed that.
What kind of projects will you make with it?


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## DS (Oct 10, 2011)

Well, I've procrastinated this story long enough.
Mostly, because my mind isn't settled on how to best tell it. But, also because it is long, so buckle up kiddos.

Back in the late 80s I had a few years of woodworking experience under my belt and it seemed that the grass was always greener somewhere else.

There was a commercial architect and builder named Fred Bloch who was advertising for someone who could make cabinets and I answered his ad. Looking back, I really enjoyed the new experiences I was able to get working for him, but, it was definitely different than working in a shop. I built a lot more than just cabinets.

He had me bouncing around from this jobsite and that doing all sorts of projects.

One day, he sends me to a site inside the Biltmore and shows me what he wants. He wants me to make these wooden forms to make concrete blocks. Not just any concrete blocks, but blocks to match the ones on a historical old home from the early 1950s.










The edges of the blocks were hollowed out to allow for rebar in the mortar joint.
Turns out they are the building blocks (quite literally) for a Frank Lloyd Wright Usonian Automatic house - specifically the Benjamin Adelman house ca. 1951.

Admittedly, at the time I had little concept a FLW's work. 
As Elon Musk said recently, those on the leading edge of innovation are more prone to failures, or something close to that. 
Well, the house that was nicknamed "The Bunker" could easily fall into that category. 
It was a new conceptual building technique and by every measure of the time it was a spectacular failure. 
Only eight of this concept were ever built and at the time of this remodel it did not comply with the local building codes.
We did take some lessons from it though, but probably not the ones originally intended by the famed architect.

When I arrived in early 1989, the place was a mess. We were pouring footings for a new addition and making a new batch of specialty concrete blocks first thing each day was turning into a real slog.

I soon learned that the house had been vacant for a couple of decades prior. 
After recently learning of a remodel for structural repairs in 1955, just 4 years after it was finished, I am now doubting it was ever seriously inhabited for any long period of time prior to our work.

After a few weeks, I began making these siding panels for the new addition, which was a modern (for the time ) 1200 square foot Master Suite with amenities such as a spa tub, his and her WCs and a Home automation system.

The siding was made from basic OSB sheets with "mortar lines" routed in them to resemble the original blocks.
These siding panels could be attached to conventional framing studs and simulate the desired look of concrete after being sprayed with a new resin type stucco called Pleko










Eventually the addition was dried in and the interior work could begin.
I set up shop in the new 3 car garage with a craftsman contractor saw and an air compressor and a few hand tools.










There was a living room ceiling in Mahogany that had been tarped off from the rest of the house. The idea was to refinish it, but on closer inspection it was ruined by termites.
Mounted on the wall above the fireplace was a wood, paint and glass mural by an artist of the time, and we were all afraid that it might also be destroyed by the pests. Fortunately, it was sound and we removed it and sent it out for restoration.

It was at that time that I set out to make a replacement ceiling for the original living room. Again, I was cutting OSB on a contractor saw in the garage. While the original ceiling had the same basic profile as the new one, the new one is quite a bit deeper coffers. The original ceiling was made simply with 1" thick planks attached to plywood.
As you can see below, the new ceiling is about 4" thick.



















FYI, all these photos are more recent and were obtained from public web pages and I neither own, nor claim any copyright to them.

I do have a box of photos that I personally took, but they've been in storage a very long time and what I don't need right now is one more project to try and find them. 
I think I know where they are though. 
"We may have to blast!" Dr Emmet L Brown. BTTF3

Next up was to replace the kitchen cabinets. The kitchen was definitely tiny and not really up to par by modern standards. Part of the courtyard was turned into an expanded dining room with a cantelever dining table, which makes the space almost bearable.










It's really hard to find Ribbon Stripe Philippine Mahogany these days, but in 1989 you could still get it.
They turned out pretty good given the tools and constraints put on them.



















Whoever owned this house at the time these photos were taken really liked pastel colored knick knacks. Just sayin'.

Eventually, came time to run the ceiling in the new master suite.
Wanting to add a Mahogany ceiling back into the house, the new ceiling would be Mahogany.
Unfortunately for me, it would match the profile of the new Living Room ceiling.

In there, we taped all our seams and it was covered with stucco, which hides a lot of sins.
The compound miters in solid wood will not be as forgiving.

After a massive load of S2S Ribbon stripe Philippine Mahogany showed up on the job site, I sat Mr. Block down to explain why the contractor saw was not up to the task.
I did have a solution for him, though.
We would have the angled rips and V grooves run in S4S on a molder at the lumber supplier's shop.

To his credit, he bit the bullet and ran all those thousands of lineal feet of lumber through a moulder.
It had to be crazy expensive.
I vaguely remember the number $70k being tossed around. (A lot more than $70k today since these were 1988 dollars).

I had to make a hand drawn schematic for that ceiling and for two and a half months, I cut and reassembled sections of the ceiling while two of my coworkers set about installing it.

After all that time, the boss brought the painters in to varnish it in place and they "tweaked" the mix with solid dyes and it came out really opaque.
You can't hardly tell that some of the most beautiful boards I've seen in a while were underneath.
I was sad for a while after that. 
The painters were hippies and spent all their breaks in a VW bus with flowers painted on it that always billowed exotic smoke from inside whenever they came out of it.










BTW, if anyone from Taliesin West, or the current owner of the Benjamin Adelman house is debating about replacing or refinishing that ceiling sometime in the coming decades, there is some stunning natural beauty hiding under that garish finish.
(Just to help inform your decision making)










This has been a super long post and I've only covered about half of it, so this will end up in multiple parts.
I was on this job off and on for over 11 months.
Hopefully I will finish telling the story in less time.

More later.


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## woodbutcherbynight (Oct 21, 2011)

Very interesting.


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## sras (Oct 31, 2009)

That's quite a story.


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## Desert_Woodworker (Jan 28, 2015)

+1 I'm a big fan of FLWright… I have a 1966 AZ territorial home… Some day they will restore it or who knows …


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## corelz125 (Sep 23, 2015)

Tons of stories about construction and wasting money by people with more money then they know what to do with.


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## DS (Oct 10, 2011)

"Adelman house, Part Two"

Because this is an original FLW built house, there were, and probably still are, many critics who panned the idea of the modern addition to it.

The old construction methods were all but abandoned with only the appearance of the style to remain on the new Master Suite addition.
This was out of necessity as much as anything else, because the old method had barely worked.
Entire walls from the original had separated and collapsed.
We did remake quite a lot of blocks with the original method, but, only enough to make repairs, or alter the original structure, like expanding the Dining Room a few feet.

Many features would not pass the modern building codes and a creative way around them had to be found.
The hallways to the den and tiny bedrooms was only 24" wide, as were all the the interior doorways.
The ceilings were only 7 feet tall in those areas too.
This particular house was a prototype for a construction method and not so much a residence for anyone to live in.

Complicating things was the fact that skilled trades were NOT used to build the original structure, because, this method was supposed to be simple enough that a young couple could build it themselves as easily as stacking legos.
The fact was, there were many failings going on.

Nonetheless, the owner wanted to make it habitable and he also wanted to appease the naysayers and keep the credential of a FLW home.
It was believed that if the Taliesin West would give the house its blessing, then it might silence the critics.

This created a very interesting work dynamic, as everyone and their dog began second guessing, "what would FLW do?"

This one particular time, it started with the builder/architect giving an addendum for the plans to revise the fireplace that the carpenter had built just the week before. 
An hour after the carpenter finished revising it, the Taliesin guy showed up (ostensibly to approve it) with his differing ideas of how it should really be done. (I never did talk with him directly and never learned his name)

The carpenter, who is now facing having to tear down and rebuild a fireplace/chimney for a third time decides to quit his job before lunchtime.
This whole time, I was working very nearby and was hearing the increasingly heated argument.
I thought I understood the salient points from all sides of the "discussion".

I had an idea.

Instead of taking lunch, I went out to my bone pile of hand made blocks, made some cuts and installed them to complete the fireplace. It was done before the boss got back from lunch.

I never told the boss and as far as I know, he never found out who did it.
Neither the builder, nor the Taliesin guy ever said anything, or complained about it.

To this day you can see "my version" of the fireplace chimney prominently in almost every publicity shot of this house.
It's the only one like it anywhere in the building, but it looks right at home at the highest point of the entire structure.

You can see it right here;










It's the chimney on the right with the open corners.

And that is how, in some small part, I designed part of an original Frank Lloyd Wright house.
Anyone wondering why that one chimney is different from all the others, well, now you know.

There is still much more to this story, but, I think I am done for tonight.


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## Desert_Woodworker (Jan 28, 2015)

+1 The hidden stories make it interesting.


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## MadMark (Jun 3, 2014)

Was in an antique shop looking at a massive, old, hand carved, oak, English sideboard. The carvings were great and in places, undercut, making it impossible to have been machine tooled.

As I felt the carvings I could almost feel the hands of the original carver working the wood.

The owner of the shop paid me a great complement. She said "You must be a woodworker." I replied "yes" and asked how she knew? She replied that "Only a woodworker would feel those carvings like you are doing."

I've never forgotten that.


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## LeeRoyMan (Feb 23, 2019)

delete, not ready


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## LeeRoyMan (Feb 23, 2019)

This one is going to be long winded. Bear with me if you dare.

Under Pressure:

I landed the bid to do a high end tie store in the Venetian Hotel. The Name of the store was Tino Cosma
To get an idea of the pressure here is some background. 
They flew me to New York to take pictures of their existing store on 5th Avenue as to copy it.
I had to submit shop drawings before starting. Now this was before sketchup, and I didn't have any drawing programs. Plus I had never supplied shop drawings before. So I hand drew them and sent them back to the architects in New York. They sent them back looking like they were graded by a teacher correcting a first grader.
Pretty embarrassed, I powered through until they signed off on them.

So setting up the next part, this is the jist of what they want. 
The left side of the store mimics the right side of the store. In the center of the walls there are to be sliding wall displays with tracks set into the floor and ceiling. There is a barrel ceiling running down the middle of the store. 
These sliding wall displays have no scribe at the top or bottom, meaning the ceiling and floor have to be perfect, within specs for the sliding track system.

I go to the job site to get final measurements so that I can design the height of the displays and guess what, no ceiling, or floor was in yet, just rocks and open sky. The designer/contractor here in town that was running the job assured me what the final floor to ceiling measurements would be. So marching on.

Next up is getting the material for the job. It's all Pearwood. But I couldn't find any Pearwood hardwood for the faces so I substituted curly maple. Sent samples to New York and samples were approved. The Pearwood takes color different than the maple so I had to tape all the cabinets off, and dye the faces (the maple) to match the carcasses.

Meanwhile a trip back to the site to check the dropped ceiling. Nope…Left side of the store was over 3/4" different than the right. (floor still not in yet.) Designer/contractor said he would get it fixed. Guess what, Union went on strike and the framers that were doing the ceiling quit. Delay, delay, Finally strike is over everybody back to work, new framers on the job. Now the designer/contractor is in Spain, on a planned vacation, so it's up to me to get the ceiling heights fixed but nobody going to listen to a cabinet maker. Finally had to meet the owner of the framing contractor at the site to explain the problem and he understood and fixed it. Don't ask me why it wasn't lasered flat to start.

Now I'm running out of time. It's funny that my delays don't matter the the Venetian Hotel, go figure.

Now I have to find and rent, short term, a warehouse so that I can get the finish done on everything and keep building on the rest of the job in my shop. Found a place not to far away, just had to paper the floor off the whole unit and move everything over there.

Next up was fighting with the concrete guys and the flooring guys to get the height right and be able to have the track for the sliding displays recessed so it will comply with my units that at this point are now already built. Keep in mind, the designer/contractor is still in Spain taking a phone call whenever he felt like it.

Next on the agenda was installing. Trying to get in was a nightmare because we had to deal with Union security at the gates (one of the reasons for the strike) and I wasn't union, but working for the owner directly. Most of the work had to be done at night.

All in all it was one of my toughest builds to do and also one that came with the most pressure.

Here are a few pictures of the store.
This is the front, you can see the barrel ceiling separating the store.
The middle rail going across the store was another drama, that I pointed out to the company doing it, but it didn't directly impact me so, sa la ve, they had to re-do the front.










Here are the sliding units. The very center unit is fixed, the 2 units on each side of the center unit slide.
Right Wall










Left Wall










Here is the finish showing the maple fronts on the pearwood.










I'm not much at story telling, but this job came with plenty of drama for a younger guy just starting in the commercial side of work. This was about 1998 or so. Talk about a school lesson, I can say I got very educated on this job.


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## woodbutcherbynight (Oct 21, 2011)

Beautiful work!!!!!


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## DS (Oct 10, 2011)

Yes, they turned out very nice!

What was the purpose of the side units being able to slide? Room partitions?
Did they keep them stowed until someone was interested in the "expanded" selection?
Not that it matters a lot, but it looks like there was considerable effort and money put into making the sliding part work.

I always enjoyed doing these types of technical commercial jobs. I always had a good handles on the myriad details.
Looks excellent, BTW.


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## corelz125 (Sep 23, 2015)

The sad part is the people in there shopping have no appreciation for the work you put into it.


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## LeeRoyMan (Feb 23, 2019)

Thanks you guys!

DS, they have floor to ceiling shelving to stock merchandise. 
It's a small store with not much of a stock room in the back.


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## DS (Oct 10, 2011)

No, I get the need for the shelving, but, why make them sliding on tracks from the ceiling?
Or, did I misunderstand something?


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## LeeRoyMan (Feb 23, 2019)

> No, I get the need for the shelving, but, *why make them sliding on tracks from the ceiling?*
> Or, did I misunderstand something?
> 
> - DS


I don't understand the question. Opposed to a different method?

I can't remember, but I think they rolled on sheaves, and the upper tracks were just for guides. 
The only time they opened them was to access the stock on the shelving behind them.

Whatever method I did, I'm sure it was what they speced on the plans.
Those NY designers were the most fickle about every detail.


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## DS (Oct 10, 2011)

Right, Okay.
So, normally they are stacked or closed.
That makes more sense I guess.

Thanks.


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## woodbutcherbynight (Oct 21, 2011)

> No, I get the need for the shelving, but, *why make them sliding on tracks from the ceiling?*
> Or, did I misunderstand something?
> 
> - DS
> ...


I have seen that done in large closets. You can squeeze alot of storage and have it fairly accessible.


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## DS (Oct 10, 2011)

"B-4 Mill Select"

For a while, the production shop I worked for about 20 some years ago was experimenting in offering an all Plywood upgraded box.
This was a production cabinet line and very cost sensitive.

I worked on developing this line for a couple of months.
The first job we ran we bought A-4 1/2" plywood and even though it was successful, the value added was initially a failure.
The problem was that once you put a clear coat finish on a A face veneer, it looks fake again, like the melamine prints.
Sure, if you knew it was real wood, you would know. But to the casual observer, it would come off looking just like the budget line.

The solution turned out to be B face veneers.
These have a lower grade of veneer and has visible seams between fletches of not always perfect color matching veneers.
The effect was amazing. 
There was no mistaking that these were real wood panels. They looked way better than the A face veneers on the inside of a cabinet.

So, with that settled, we were off to the races selling and building this upgraded line.

The back faces of the panels would never be seen on an installed cabinet, so a 4 backer was specified.
A 4 back is a mill-select-option backer. 
It is only there to stabilize and balance the panel.
So, when you order a 4 backer from the mill, they love it because they can clean house to get rid of whatever leftovers are hanging around taking up real estate at the mill.

The result is an less expensive panel that is still real wood. Perfect for our new line.

Here's the thing about a mill select option. It can be ANYTHING.
So a Birch B face, can also be a Birch 2 back.

The first unit we got in, about 5 sheets had A face figured walnut sequence match veneers for the mill select back and a B face in Birch. 
Basically they had A-2 figured Walnut that they unloaded on us as B-4 Birch.
Perfectly fine, until you realize that sequenced figured Walnut is about 4x more money than Birch.

Needless to say, those five panels got set aside and were not made into production grade cabinets.
One of the employees bought them and built some Walnut bookcases on the cheap.


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## Tony_S (Dec 16, 2009)

Same thing happened to me a couple of years ago. I ordered 10 sheets of A-4 1/2" QSWO with 'high fleck'. Three of the sheets 4 face was near flawless Lacewood. They other 7 were typical open knot crap. Still haven't figured out what to use them for…but it won't be stairs!


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## DS (Oct 10, 2011)

I spent about 45 minutes writing part 3 to the Adelman house story, only have it evaporate into the ether before I could post it. Very frustrating. Eventually I will get back to it.

My current project is a palatial scale kitchen with two massive Islands, a massive range and three 36" fully integrated refrigerators on one wall.

It looks all very impressive and is a great social gathering place, but would really suck to cook in.

Which is why the third refrigerator is actually a hidden doorway to the back kitchen - a sleek and efficient galley kitchen where the full time chef and his two assistants can prepare meals, make lots of messes and have fully prepared meals magically appear from behind door number 3.

This is what happens when you lower interest rates…


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## bigblockyeti (Sep 9, 2013)

DS,

Your stories are worthy of record beyond posts on LJ. You could even assemble them into a series of short stories for aspiring professional woodworkers. I think a 200 page $15 paperback would be a great seller, I know I'd buy one.


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## DS (Oct 10, 2011)

Thanks for the words of support.
I'm not sure the stories are worthy of a paperback, but, I appreciate the encouragement.


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## pottz (Sep 15, 2015)

maybe a reality show ds ?


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## DS (Oct 10, 2011)

Heheh, not likely… though, the comment made me LOL.

Thes are probably the stories I will babble over and over to the nurses in the old folks home - each story starting the same way, "Have I ever told you about the time…?"


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## MadMark (Jun 3, 2014)

Better than starting: "This one time, at band camp …"


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## woodbutcherbynight (Oct 21, 2011)

> Better than starting: "This one time, at band camp …"
> 
> - Madmark2


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## DS (Oct 10, 2011)

Interesting turn of events…
We've had five ultra-contemporary Rift Cut White Oak jobs come through in the last two months.
Prior to that, I've seen only two Oak jobs in the last 15 years or so.

We did that contemporary horizontal grain matched QSWO job a couple years ago, maybe someone liked it?
(See my miterfolding thread for details on that one)

No Southern Red Oak with whitewash yet, thank goodness.

All of the sudden, I feel really old.


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## bigblockyeti (Sep 9, 2013)

^ Pictures? I've got 4 white oak logs sitting on my trailer next to my sawmill right now, I'm debating how I want to mill them up.


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## sras (Oct 31, 2009)

I just had a story told to me today - I hope it's worthy of this thread 

I was at a custom hardwood supplier to pick up a couple pieces for an upcoming project. I paid up and the manager started telling stories (I guess it was a slow day).

One of them had to do with a quote for 3,000 bd ft of walnut for a mansion on the east coast. The requirement was highly figured claro walnut, 5 inch planks, from northern California (southern Oregon would not do).

He sent 4 samples from 4 different trees. The subcontractor had the customer review and then send a reply. We would like 3,000 bd ft from tree #3. The manager replied "I can't do that".

A short while later a different individual got in touch. He said "You don't seem to understand, money is no object. We would like the order filled from tree #3". The manager said "No it is you that doesn't understand. God hasn't made a tree that can supply 3,000 bd ft of highly figured 5 inch wide boards".

A short while after that the agent for the whole project called him. He said "Listen this is easy. You just supply the lumber and tell him it was from the same tree. No one will be the wiser". The manager said "No way. There are several ways to test and verify which tree a board came from. Someone this rich likely got his money from catching others in a simple lie and taking them to the cleaners. I'll tell you what. I'll sell the lumber to you and you can tell him it's from one tree."

The agent hung up and that was the end of the story.


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## Knockonit (Nov 5, 2017)

Back in the late 80s , we had a guy named Symington who was governor, he had to have the governors office remodeled, i worked with the millwork company who did the work. 
anyway, i was doing what they called the ''rotunda' it was a segemented room on the 9th floor of the office building, you came off elevator and into this room before getting into main office of gubermint guy. 
anyway, premade panels approximately 36 inches in a wains coat, and murals above. i was on my hands and knees for a week installing panels, trim and base, cap to wainscoat. the bozo came in one day and whined about the panels not being a color to his liking. so…............off they came, new ones came out, did the same, finally all was well .
then muralist came in to do the upper panels, history of Az ect. pretty sure the muralist did the pics at least three times, all what fyfe symington wanted, problem was, half of it was out of sequence, when pointed out, well, guess what, .....................he was a joke along with his administration.

on another note, did work on the FLW Potter house, back in the late 70s, a Dr. Benheim was the owner, one of the worst homes i have ever worked on radius everything, typical of FLW, all flair, lotsa poor function.

We also remodeled the Biltmore way back, the legal issue of getting molds made for the pre cast panels took longer than doing the remodel, some cool stuff, but details were insane
happy days. glad i only do small remodels now. faster and more fun
Rj in az


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## DS (Oct 10, 2011)

Well, these pics are from June 2019…



> Island Post - ready to fold
> 
> 
> 
> ...


This post was focused on the miterfolding technique I had worked up on the CNC machine.

I'll have to rummage around and see if I have pics of the finished job.


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## DS (Oct 10, 2011)

> I just had a story told to me today - I hope it s worthy of this thread
> 
> I was at a custom hardwood supplier to pick up a couple pieces for an upcoming project. I paid up and the manager started telling stories (I guess it was a slow day).
> 
> ...


We run into this similar issue when we run sequence matched veneer cabinets.

Any sequence of fletches needs to come from the same tree to look right.

Typically there is an inspection at the supplier, usually by email with photos.
It would be like, we have a sequence of 12 sheets, 9, sheets and 7 sheets.
If the three trees look like they coordinate well enough, we would match the sequence to a single area of the house based on how much is needed.
As long as all the patterns in each room match, then, another room can be made from a different tree.

In rare cases where a room is too big for any single sequence, you have to get creative and select "related" veneers that look well together.

It is a royal PIA and usually nearly doubles the price for cabinets.


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## DS (Oct 10, 2011)

> Back in the late 80s , we had a guy named Symington who was governor, he had to have the governors office remodeled, i worked with the millwork company who did the work.
> anyway, i was doing what they called the rotunda it was a segemented room on the 9th floor of the office building, you came off elevator and into this room before getting into main office of gubermint guy.
> anyway, premade panels approximately 36 inches in a wains coat, and murals above. i was on my hands and knees for a week installing panels, trim and base, cap to wainscoat. the bozo came in one day and whined about the panels not being a color to his liking. so…............off they came, new ones came out, did the same, finally all was well .
> then muralist came in to do the upper panels, history of Az ect. pretty sure the muralist did the pics at least three times, all what fyfe symington wanted, problem was, half of it was out of sequence, when pointed out, well, guess what, .....................he was a joke along with his administration.
> ...


I remember a field trip in grade school where we toured the state capitol building and went up and saw the rotunda and the governor's office.

Fife got into some legal trouble with his Phoenix Marketplace project by allegedly mis-stating numbers on a financial statement to the banks funding the project. That whole thing went south fast.
My memory is foggy, but it seems like he got pardoned some years later.


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## DS (Oct 10, 2011)

"Guess what? You get to build it now."

So, we've been doing these McMansions for a builder that have these enormous kitchens.
The ceilings are at 16' and have giant girders spanning the room.

I've drawn four or five of these homes that we've built already and the current one has another super giant hood chimney.
We built the first 13' tall range hood awhile back and there are some photos floating around here on LJs of that one.

Subsequent hoods were spec'd as drywall and framing by others.

This was the case for the current one, which, the designer decided to get cute with and take the profile and jog it in and out on the corners.

All this was spec'd for framing and drywall by others, so, I just banged out a real quick sketchup rendering, dropped it into the kitchen drawings and didn't give it much more thought.

Now that the job is approved for construction, of course, now they want it in wood.
I only found out when I noticed the approved revised estimate showing the addendum for the hood and payment in full. It's a done deal.

Now that I get to build it, I wish I had been a bit more careful with the sketchup drawing.
It will be fun. I love a good challenge.










I can just imagine the conversation with the builder's framing carpenter, "You want me to build what?"


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## Desert_Woodworker (Jan 28, 2015)

+1 So much experience and talent


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## DS (Oct 10, 2011)

So, the boss paid my OT to engineer this hood Friday.
Right as I finished the CNC files for cutting it, I was notified the project is on hold for new changes.

That is kind of how it goes sometimes with big money projects. The level of entitlement scales waaaaay up.
I don't even know what they might be changing until Monday.

It was sure nice of them to wait until I finished my work to change it, though.
It is always so much more enjoyable the second and third time around.


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## MadMark (Jun 3, 2014)

*DS:*
Not to mention the dead loss of materials and the schedule impact of the jobs waiting …


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## Desert_Woodworker (Jan 28, 2015)

DS- respectfully a change order is a change order the contract should allow for this and be billed accordingly. I assume that it is a computer adjustment? If so, change it and bill accordingly…


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## DS (Oct 10, 2011)

I just got a glimpse of the change notes a few minutes ago.
It creates about twenty extra hours work for me.

I don't mind change orders, but, had they made the changes before approving the final construction drawings, the extra time would have been zero extra hours.

There is a general disregard for the engineering time required.
Fact is, I spend approximately the same amount of shop time as every other person that will work on this job (division of labor, etc.)
The boss would be freaking out if the finishers had to spend an extra twenty hours to redo work they already did.

No one is freaking out that I will have to spend that extra time.
Understand, I was already done with my part of this job. Now I get to do it over again.


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## Desert_Woodworker (Jan 28, 2015)

Respectfully you are working in a corporate shop… and in a corporate shop… you do the "shuffle" as long as they are paying you. It is no different in the small shops… You work for an owner and it is his call.

IMO- you have so much talent and "respectfully" endure their protocol-










I have faith in you…


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## DS (Oct 10, 2011)

Well, it's official.

*Oak is making a comeback!*



















After well over 18 years without a single request for Oak, I now have half a dozen designers specifying White Oak on nearly every upcoming job.

Go figure. smh


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## woodbutcherbynight (Oct 21, 2011)

Figures right??


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## Desert_Woodworker (Jan 28, 2015)

> Well, it s official.
> 
> *Oak is making a comeback!*
> 
> ...


Partially "right" 20 years ago red Oak was the #1 choice for kitchen cabinets and it fell out of favor. Today, IMO white Oak is becoming in vogue especially quarter-sawn…


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## DS (Oct 10, 2011)

Yup. Quarter Sawn, or, more precisely these days, Rift Cut White Oak is being specified as a material in combination with painted cabinets.

I am just surprised that any Oak is on the spec sheets at all.


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## DS (Oct 10, 2011)

"Didn't miss a beat"

Back in 1998 when we set up the custom cabinet shop from scratch, we decided to go CNC for the core of our machines.

We bought a Komo Innova 408 CNC Router and put it right next to the new Unique 2700 CNC Door Shaper. 
Behind that was a very large edgebander. 
The trio created an island, around which, lots of work got done.

The Komo weighed in at around 16000lbs and had a stationary gantry and a moveable table. 
The Door Machine weighed in at around 9000lbs and was about 24" behind the Komo.

Our operator back then was a guy named Wayne, who had been in the US Marine Corp.
He was a stout, no nonsense fellow who was all about getting it done.

In order to improve the vacuum when cutting panels smaller than the full 4X8 router table, Wayne would cover any exposed spoil board area with 1/4" 2s Melamine offal panels.

This one time he was cutting a part from a scrap panel roughly 48" x 36". 
This left an odd sized area of exposed spoil board on the table and Wayne didn't have an appropriately sized piece to cover it.

Undeterred, Wayne decided to place a new 4×8 sheet of 1/4" thick 2S Melamine on the table and just let the extra hang off the back.

It seems like the problem is solved, right?
Of course, the first thing the machine does after hitting the start button is move the table all the way to the back to begin cutting on the front edge of the first part.

The 1/4" Melamine, which was hanging off the back of the table, crashes into the 9000lb CNC Shaper and knocks it off of its foundation and over about 9 inches.

By the time I got out there, the part had already finished cutting, complete with dadoes and shelf pin holes.
After the shock of what happened wore off, I looked at the part that was cut-It was perfect. 
The machine didn't skip a beat.

We estimated the vacuum's holding force on the table was somewhere north of 50 tons. 
No material on the table moved from the collision.

I explained to Wayne that if he had been walking behind the machine when it was operating, he probably would've amputated both legs. 
That woke him up a bit.

That area between the machines was already marked off as a no man's land, "Lock out, Tag out" kind of situation. After that, it also got a physical barrier as well.

If you had asked me before, what would happen if a panel on the CNC router would collide with the CNC Shaper, I would not have predicted this outcome.

Pro tip: If you have a choice, a moving gantry CNC router will use about half as much real estate for the same size working table as a stationary Gantry machine. 
It's also good to learn all the modalities in which a CNC machine can kill, or seriously maim you-and then try to prevent those modalities. (And yes, there are a few)

Lessons learned.


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## Desert_Woodworker (Jan 28, 2015)

> Lessons learned.
> 
> - DS


Yet we still dance with them… IMO like riding a motorcycle… IMO experience my CNC and Laser do only what they are told… believe me all mishaps have been my computer programming and job set up… 
Thankfully mine have been slight (yet scary) Remember once the machine starts it does what you program it to do.

Thx for your update…


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## MadMark (Jun 3, 2014)

Was programming a large piece of industrial equipment with hydraulics, pneumatics, high vacuum, and various motion systems. I mis-timed a move and made, what we in the industry call, an "expensive noise". The 1500 psi hydraulics caught the 12×12x1/8 stainless steel carrier plate and bent it into a Z fold while venting the vacuum system with a loud *Fa-Wump!*

Another job was programming a wafer slicing machine. Ran a 40,000 rpm water cooled cutting disk into the vacuum chuck and cut a good sized gouge before the ceramic blade shattered.


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## DS (Oct 10, 2011)

"Mr. Smith"

I got my start in woodworking back in 1978 at the young age of 14.
My Junior High School in Mesa, AZ had a class called "Introduction to Industrial Arts".

While it is fairly uncommon these days, the school was fairly well equipped with a wood shop, a metal shop, a plastics shop and a drafting school.

The intro class divided a semester into 4 nine week classes and you would cycle through each of the four classes just to see if you like some of them and get your feet wet making some basic projects.

I count it as my good fortune to have taken the Drafting course first. I don't remember the teacher's name there, but, he discussed the importance of good planning and good drawings.

The next course for me was the woodworking. That teacher was Mr. Smith. 
He was a fellow in his late thirties, or early forties. (That might make him in his mid-eighties now.)

He spent the first week of class discussing how to select the proper project and going over the safety instructions for each of the tools in the shop.
At the beginning of the second week, he passed out premade plans for a small wooden tool tray (think hammer and nails) that he said would be the classes' first project.

Right away, I became a pain in his you-know-what.

I had just had it drilled into me that a good project was something that was necessary or desirable. (By none other than Mr. Smith himself) and I really didn't need a tool tray.

What I needed was a rifle rack for my single shot 0.22 rifle I had recently received for my birthday that year. (Along with the NRA gun safety course to go with it.)

So, fresh out of the drafting class, I asked if I could make the gun rack. 
He said that if I produced a good set of working drawings and he approved it, then it would be okay.
Out of thirty students, I was the only one who didn't make a tool tray.

The very first dado I ever made was on the wrong side of the line. 
I wanted to start over, but, Mr. Smith showed me how to fill the dado and correct the mistake.

After the intro classes were over, I signed up for Woodworking 101 and found myself back in Mr. Smith's class the next semester.

Mr. Smith seem to be always critical of the sanding on my projects. (And deservedly so)
At that young age I don't think I had the patience, nor the best practice knowledge when it came to sanding and finishing.
I'm sure he went over it several times, but, sanding seemed to just be drudgery and I likely missed some good info there.

I caught his attention once when, after making a cut on the table saw and before the blade fully spun down, I laid a workpiece on the still spinning blade and sent it flying across the shop and into the back wall.

And again when I decided to make a chess table with a single turned pedestal leg and I failed to chuck the 4" square wood blank tight enough and it flew off the lathe with a loud bang. (At least I wasn't the kid who got his shirt caught in the lathe and bruised his entire chest black and blue when he was pulled into it.)

I am thankful for Mr. Smith who had the patience enough to let me learn and the persistence to press me to follow through with the sanding and finishing of my projects.

I think he learned a little more patience than he bargained for that year and definitely more patience than I learned with sanding and finishing.

If you're reading this, thank you Mr. Smith.


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## DonBroussard (Mar 27, 2012)

DS - A good story well told. Most of us had a "Mr. Smith" at one time, pushing us to be the best version of ourselves. Some of you ARE "Mr. Smith".


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## bigblockyeti (Sep 9, 2013)

I had Mr. Younts in 5th -8th grade at Washington middle school in Maryville, MO back in the late 80's as my industrial arts teacher and he too would allow kids to work on increasingly advanced projects as their skills developed. I remember when I was in 6th grade there was an 8th grader named Dustin who was making a cross bow from a kit *in school*, my how the times have changed.


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## DS (Oct 10, 2011)

"Just build it like the file"

Back in the day, when our shop was installing 3400 homes per year in Phoenix, we did a lot of complete subdivisions on what was called a master plan contract.

The master plan contract pre-negotiated pricing and options for the entire community before the first house was ever built.
This allowed us to pre-buy all the materials for the subdivision in bulk at negotiated lower costs and then take delivery of raw materials on a preset schedule.

This had the effect of getting clients more house for less money, but also limited homebuyers to the options outlined in the master contract.

Often, the base plan was extraordinarily cheap in order for the builder to put a much lower number on the billboard at the entrance to the subdivision. E.g. "Homes starting in the low 200's"

In all the time we ever did this, we only ever built the base model twice. 
Once, in one model home, so the builder could legitimately validate his sign, and another time when the homeowner wanted a gourmet kitchen, but, it wasn't in the contract. 
The day he got his Certificate of Occupancy, we uninstalled his brand new base model kitchen and installed his custom gourmet kitchen that same day.

I tell you that story, to tell you this one.

We were considered trade partners with the home builders we sold to.
As a trade partner we could not only get a percentage discount on new homes and discounted financing, but, we could sweat equity our particular trade. Basically, cabinets at cost of materials (at the bulk rate contract price too).
It was a pretty sweet deal, to be sure.

So, one day the owner of the company brings me a standard plan and says he is leaving on a one week vacation right then, but wanted me to get this personal sweat equity job put through the shop right away.

He drops the project file on my desk and runs out the door.
Right away, I realize there is a problem.

The spec sheets under a master contract job has ALL the available options on it and there is usually a client design meeting to 'deselect' the options they don't want to pay extra for.
There have been no selections made to opt out of anything.

I call my boss, but, he is on the way to the airport. 
He doesn't have the patience to answer my questions.

He says, just build what is in the file.
I try to tell him that options weren't chosen, but, he cuts me off repeating his instruction to just build it like it is in the file and then hangs up and turns off his phone.

So, even though I am pretty sure that he doesn't really want every option, some of which were super impractical, but look great in a model home, I decide that I have no other choice than to follow his instructions.

One of the more impractical options was an extension of the kitchen cabinets into the dining room with decorative bean drawers in the base cabinets.
This is eight custom made drawer boxes with glass paneled fronts and a shallow partition meant to be filled with different dry legumes, which, were only ever done once in a model home.

True to form, the rare unicorn custom drawers for his job were mis-made in the shop and had to be remade a second time.

A few weeks go by and the cabinets get installed.

Then, it happens. The irate phone call.

What heck is all this??
This is what was in the file you refused to take ten minutes to review with me.
I don't want those stupid bean drawers!
Good thing we built them twice, then.

The boss wanted to continue to blame me for his messed up order.
That was the last time I worked for him.

I left for a much more lucrative position across town
The rules apply to everyone except the boss, I guess.

This experience reinforced my motto to "give them what they want, not what they ask for."
So many people disagree with that, but, it if you think about it, not everyone knows how to ask for what they want.
The trick is to know when this is the case.


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## Desert_Woodworker (Jan 28, 2015)

> *This experience reinforced my motto to "give them what they want, not what they ask for."
> So many people disagree with that, but, it if you think about it, not everyone knows how to ask for what they want.
> The trick is to know when this is the case.*
> 
> - DS


*+1 on your effort and success in the mass-produced developments*. BUT 20 years ago Phoenix had small cabinet shops without computer design and CNC technology. In my case (small scale) I found that by spending time selling and designing I was able to show them "their" design with words and paper. [:>} and tears of joys on them seeing my product believing their design has come to fruition.

*Track development-* you should compose or write on this avenue of business. (seriously)

In your case, my guess is it is between your designer and the purchasing agent? Costs? IMO people want to into the "shelter" as affordable (cheaply) as possible. And as I say, "people want a Cadillac, but at a Chevrolet price.
*
Ps Try a YouTube channel with Lessons from DS*


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## bigblockyeti (Sep 9, 2013)

> This experience reinforced my motto to "give them what they want, not what they ask for."
> So many people disagree with that, but, it if you think about it, not everyone knows how to ask for what they want.
> The trick is to know when this is the case.
> 
> - DS


This is very noble of you, I've learn the opposite, "Give the people what you can prove they approved." Long ago I lost patience to hold the hands of stupid, wealthy people. A fool and his money are quickly parted (at least pre-TARP and numerous other undeserved bailout programs).


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## DS (Oct 10, 2011)

So, this is not to say that I build whatever I want and don't listen to the client, but, quite the opposite.

It is sometimes hard to hear what a client is trying to express, but can't quite get there.
Quite often they will say something like, "I'll know what I like when I see it."
That is super frustrating because it turns into a game of 21 questions, except that before each question is several hours of drafting.

So, figuring out what they want early can usually save three or four extra rounds of revised drawings.
I think that sometimes we get jobs that already had drawings done somewhere else and they were unhappy with the end result, so they walked away and came to us.

The work I do now is totally custom work, so everything is drawn in immaculate and sometimes excruciating detail.

Back then, I would draft the master plans, which often takes a few months to massage to the final contract.
That turns the Design Center interview into a strictly sales interview without any new drawings needing made.
Select the wood, door style, color and options from the predetermined list under that contract. Done.
Sub-divisions would routinely have 300+ homes and four to six models, each with 4 to six options.
It turns into a stack of drawings about 3" thick in the final contract.


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## bigblockyeti (Sep 9, 2013)

I'm familiar with the design center sales pitch. We considered (briefly) building with America's home place, this was back in March this year we first visited them. Their prices were locked in despite soaring lumber costs and they too were scheduled to go up but hadn't, yet. We didn't get too deep into the details as they wanted $1000 before we sat down and really hashed things out. I told the head sales guy "sorry, it doesn't work like that, if you can't answer 6 simple questions before we submit a deposit you are guaranteed to loose my business." At any rate, the quality of what they were building didn't meet my specifications so if they can't even do the foundation and framing as I require, the deal was dead before it got rolling.


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## Knockonit (Nov 5, 2017)

giving clients what they want has been my success, with very few unhappy ones over the last 40 years. 
each generation seems to have a different way of explaining or attempting to explain what they want, where they want their project to go.

having built rather large custom homes for decades (biggest 18k sq ft), and small projects which by far have been much more fun and enjoyable watching someone get their ''dream''.

I've only kep biz going due to three employees who have been with me for a few decades, none of which want to carry it on, so its going to end this year, at 73 i'm beaten down, not by clients by the attempt to put on and keep good employees, with respect and appreciation for good work and ethics.

i 'haven't bid a job in a few decades, we are referral, with a usual year back log, shame no one wants to carry it on. attempts to sell have brought so many idiots to the door, its scarey.

hate to call it quits, as giving clients their ''dream'' has been a hoot
Rj in az


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## DS (Oct 10, 2011)

> I m familiar with the design center sales pitch. We considered (briefly) building with America s home place, this was back in March this year we first visited them. Their prices were locked in despite soaring lumber costs and they too were scheduled to go up but hadn t, yet. We didn t get too deep into the details as they wanted $1000 before we sat down and really hashed things out. I told the head sales guy "sorry, it doesn t work like that, if you can t answer 6 simple questions before we submit a deposit you are guaranteed to loose my business." At any rate, the quality of what they were building didn t meet my specifications so if they can t even do the foundation and framing as I require, the deal was dead before it got rolling.
> 
> - bigblockyeti


There are usually, but not always, built in mechanisms to account for material increases. Especially if the build out of the subdivision is several years long. There may be limits on how often or how much of an increase may happen, so that may explain the answer you got r.e. Price increases.

What you need to understand is that ALL the lumber was already purchased in bulk for ALL the houses (or at least the first phase) before you even showed up, so most price increases are somewhat mitigated.

The $1000 deposit seems a bit high, but it weeds out the looky-loos from the seriously interested buyers.

For custom cabinets, my drafting deposit is a percentage of the contract and sometimes well over $10k for cabinet drawings on a big job for the same reason.

We already have more work than we can schedule, so it thins the heard somewhat and doesn't waste time we don't have on someone who might take our drawings to someone else to build.


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## DS (Oct 10, 2011)

An interesting thing is happening with imported hinges and drawer guides.
Because of the backlog of container ships at the ports of entry, we are having to order several months ahead of our production schedule.

I find myself creating trial bills of materials for future jobs based on the initial job drawings just so we can get enough stock in house on time.

The whole thing seems like a manufactured crisis by the shipping industry.
I'm not sure what the end game is, but, two things I know; someone is likely profiting from it, and It is annoying as heck.

Hopefully it resolves itself soon.


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## Desert_Woodworker (Jan 28, 2015)

DS I know that you know this but to others. USE extreme caution should you use a Chinese knockoff hinge and drawer hardware. I say this from a mistake that I made 20 yrs ago- My supplier had recommended them as an alternative… product failure- cost and time to repair and replace. Lesson learned but I only recommend Salice or Blum products.

Cheap hinge-


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## DS (Oct 10, 2011)

Right.

Our imported hinges and guides are generally from Italy, Germany and Austria.
Very little Chinese hardware is used by the high-end custom market we build for.
(Though I am certain they are also dealing with the same issues)

I can see how you read that though.
BTW, there are *some* Chinese products that surpass the quality of their European equivalents.


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## JackDuren (Oct 10, 2015)

I went to work for a guy named Les Akers in Odessa, Mo. He had a cabinet shop at that time in a building in town called the old shoe factory. Les had a funny sounding voice , but guess he was partially deaf. Les was very smart. He was always one step of you and the customer. Les was trying to pen a furniture store. We made hutches, China cabinets, corner cabinets, etc. In the corner of the back of that building was a very expensive sports car covered up. I asked and one of the guys said it had been there for a long time. I found out Les bought it, then hid it in the shop. The shop wasn't leased in his name so they couldn't find it. He would take customers up front money for cabinets and rotate ot into furniture and lease money for the furniture company. He rarely came to the shop,and would have us meet him for payroll. If a strange car was there he would call to make sure it wasn't a customer..He would buy lumber and sheet goods from Paxton Lumber company amd as soon as it hit the door , he would have us cut it up. He said they won't take it back if it's chopped up.

He owed me money and elected to let me have a dining room set and it's still in my kitchen today. He bought 40k in tables and chairs from a furniture company to fill his store and they were calling for their money, but he had moved it to the new location they were unaware of. He still owed me several weeks pay. So someone I knew wanted cabinets. I went to the shop and cut the whole set out at 1 in the morning. After cutting the set out I quit.,I went built the cabinets installed and made my money he owed me.

I went through Oak Grove Missour several years later and Les was in the car in front of me and looked at me in the mirror. He just nodded and drove off. He knew I beat him at his own game.


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## JackDuren (Oct 10, 2015)

There are a lot of employers out there that have put the time and sweat in to start a company. Then there's people like Les who want you to do the sweating while he takes the profit..


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## DS (Oct 10, 2011)

You could always tell the businesses that were struggling to stay afloat.
I called it "Working the shoestring"
Paying for previous jobs' bills with deposits for upcoming work.

It's no fun for anyone in that situation.
Mostly it comes from mismanagement of resources. Not really knowing what a project is costing you and not spending within your means.

Fortunately, I've been able to avoid working for many of those folks.

I've seen shops that every 8 to 10 years, they declare bankruptcy and reopen under a new name in the same building with the same equipment and employees. All the vendors and some clients got screwed.
Wash, rinse, repeat.

They treated it like that is a normal way to do business. I never understood that.

Price your jobs right, minimize frivolous expenses, don't cut corners making the client happy.
Work with urgency and plan for success.


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## controlfreak (Jun 29, 2019)

I had a customer that was a cabinet guy. He had me put in an alarm system and immediately got behind, in fact I don't think he ever paid me a dime. I asked the guy to who referred him to me and he went off "that SOB" owes me 20K$.... The guy had the nerve to ask me to loan him money to buy the hardware for a cabinet job he was doing and I told him I am not in the financing business but if I was I wouldn't loan money to people that can't pay their bills. He called needing the alarm system moved to a new location (he obviously was behind on the rent) so I said yeah I'll move it, I had the guys remove it and bring the box full back to the office. He never had the nerve to ask me why I hadn't come as promised to reinstall the system. It must be awful to go through life hiding from people that hate you but as we all know, that's just how some people roll. I can only imagine how he treated his customers or what corners he cut on cabinets.


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## DS (Oct 10, 2011)

"2nd Shift"

As the little shop we started began to max out on production capacity we contemplated what steps we could do to increase our production.

We had maxed out at $3.5M in annual production capacity, but, were facing $5M in sales. (A good problem to have, I'll admit.)

It was decided that, in the short term, the easiest step would be to add a 2nd shift.

Even though it temporarily divided our workforce, we saw an immediate bump in production as the machinery was operational for longer periods of the day.

It wasn't until a few weeks later that we discovered a disturbing trend.

As a semi-custom cabinet manufacturer, we offered a production line of cabinets, but, we allowed customization within a limited scope.
Occasionally, someone would have a truly custom request and we tried our best to meet those requests.

Unfortunately, there began to be a backlog of the more difficult items not being done-I mean, for weeks, long after the balance of the job was shipped out the the jobsite.

As it turns out, whenever a difficult piece would come up, that shift took the attitude of, "If we ignore it, we can just leave that difficult item for the following shift." 
Meanwhile, the other shift was cursing that their counterparts were being lazy and unproductive for not producing the item that they themselves were unwilling to work on.

It was super frustrating.

It wasn't long before the decision was made to sell our door manufacturing equipment (about $100k worth) and use the increased available real estate, (and boost in available capital), to expand the other operations and raise our throughput. 
The door manufacturing was outsourced to a regional door manufacturer in California, and, best of all, the bickering stopped as there was, once again, only one shift.


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## DS (Oct 10, 2011)

"Now you see it, now you don't"

Where to start?
Back in the early 2000's, as you might know, if you've been following these stories, I was working for a company that opened a brand new cabinet shop. We handled the custom and semi-custom jobs for a volume production cabinet company.

At the peak they managed to hit about 4000 homes per year before the 2008 housing crash. About 250 to 300 of those jobs per year went through our little custom shop.

Some builders have a fairly standard set of floor plans that they reuse and adapt for new communities all around town, so, much of the work is repetitive.

For example, a Shea Homes 100 plan is the basic entry level model that they used throughout several communities and we had installers who could install two of them in a day.
Whenever the install involved a Shea 100 plan, these guys got the assignments because they could pretty much do it in their sleep.

Just to lay some ground work, I need to preface the rest of this story with this disclaimer; I am not a lawyer. Even if I were a lawyer, and I'm not, the laws in your area on this subject may be different than the ones I am rudimentarily familiar with in Phoenix.

From what I understand, title to cabinetry passes from the cabinet shop to the homeowner, or builder, as the case may be, the moment it becomes attached to the house.
This one occasion, the installers finished up installing the second Shea 100 plan for the day and went home.

As per the company policy, within 24 hours after any install, the installation supervisor walks through the home with the client and "grades" the installation and creates a punch list of any issues that need fixing, or, revised in any way.

Since the installers were paid piecework, this grade directly affected their pay, so they are incentivized to do good work. There was a bonus budget for each floor plan and if the installer's work made the grade, it activated the bonus for them on that job. 
If a technician had to go out and fix the failed home's issues, The repair tech would get the bonus in addition to his salary.

When the installation supervisor arrived with the builder to inspect the job the next day, they were met with a completely empty house.

Apparently, after our guys left, someone else showed up to the house and uninstalled all the cabinets and hauled them off. 
You could see the holes in the walls from the installation screws and we had pictures of the finished installation from right before the installers left the previous day.

Apparently, someone had an older Shea 100 plan and needed a new house full of cabinets.
We were pretty sure it was somebody closely connected to either the builder, or the shop, because a witness who saw them loading the truck said they had our cabinet shop shirts on. 
This wasn't hard to do, as there were hundreds of ex-employees who had access to several shirts as they were required to be worn by employees on the jobsites.

Since the cabinets had already been installed when they were stolen, it was the builder's insurance who ultimately had to cover the loss.

The takeaway from this is,

1) always take pictures of your finished installation.

And 
2) there are just some people in this world that are scumbags and who don't respect the property of others. (And some of them live in a Shea 100 plan home)


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## DS (Oct 10, 2011)

"They aren't all good ideas"

This is a current project, so, I don't want to reveal too much.
The client's designer requested a secret doorway bookcase in the great room next to a double-sided fireplace shared with the new, 'soon-to-be-secret' room.

To me, it didn't look good on paper and now, looks even less so, in person.

No matter how well we conceal the entryway, any 5 year old child will tell you where the "hidden room" is.


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## DS (Oct 10, 2011)

Update: 
The hidden room bookcases just went through the finish room last week.
They worked out pretty good. 
They kept the elliptical arches, but, we squared off the tops of the bookcases and had an elliptical pediment above.

Rumor is that they are swapping out the two-sided firebox for a one sided version.
I'm not sure if maybe there will be TWO one-sided boxes back-to-back, but, at least, my faith in all things "hidden" is now restored.

(And Yes, I cut the ellipses on the CNC machine - easy-peasy)


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## DS (Oct 10, 2011)

"No way out"

The company I'm currently working for has been growing at a phenomenal rate, every single year since their inception and moving into larger shops has been a routine occurrence.

There is still room to grow into our current building, so we're not considering relocating anytime soon, (that I am aware of).

However, when we moved into this building, we had to make quite a few improvements to the infrastructure.
The front offices were gutted and the remaining enclosed space had one exterior exit door and two doors into the warehouse (shop) space.

We framed in a employee break room around one of the interior doorways and set up the rest of the space for the showroom, conference room and business offices.

About a week after the employee break room was finished, we came into the office that morning to discover a massive hole in the ceiling of the showroom.

As it turns out, we were still waiting on the locksmith to remove the old keyed lockset on the breakroom and swap it for a passage lockset, and, because of the change in primary entry direction, someone could (and did) get locked in the breakroom.

Unfortunately for poor Javier, it was the end of the day and the last remaining person had left the building, none the wiser that Javier was trapped in the new breakroom.

He tried in vain to reach the boss on his cell phone, but, to no avail.
After about an hour, Javier climbed atop the new cabinets and punched a hole (literally punched) into the crawl space above the breakroom, and then a new hole down into the showroom where he could get out.

The boss wasn't even angry. Poor Javier had to endure some teasing for awhile, but, he took it like a champ.

Maybe the warning signs taped on both sides of that door should've been printed in Spanish, as well as English. 
Oops!


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## DS (Oct 10, 2011)

*"The most expensive router in the history of routers"*

At the very first shop I worked, back in 1986, I eventually found myself doing purchasing in the office.
The old grey-haired codger who was in that job for the previous few decades had retired and I had big shoes to fill.

It took me a short while to come up to speed, meet and learn the vendors, etc, but, it was a good fit for me.
A few months later Corporate, being unhappy about the bottom line of things, brought in a gung-ho guy from Nevada to "get things into shape".

Well, he did.
The product line needed updating and that meant new processes, new tools and new machinery - not to mention convincing corporate that they would have to spend money to make money.

$35k for an edge bander back in 1986 was a lot of money for a shop that barely pulled a profit, but, he promised it would be paid for in 90 days. And, not without considerable effort, it was.

Needless to say, money was tight for those three months and the manager took it upon himself to "teach the new kid doing the purchasing" how to save a buck or two.

I've learned over the decades, that making money is, mathematically speaking, more about how much you spend to "buy" the product, than how much you can sell the product for. (Buying the product, in this case, is your entire cost, including overhead and labor, to acquire, or manufacture the product)
This holds true, no matter what your business is.

I'm not saying to cut corners with the product, but, there are smart ways to "buy" the same quality items for less and it is worth the time and effort to find out how to do that.

That being said, you can also be penny wise and dollar foolish.

In this case, we already had fantastic relationships with all out vendors, (due to the old guy being around so long), and while there are legitimate ways to improve the bottom line, there are limits that, when crossed, will backfire on you.

In this case, I had negotiated what I felt was a fair price for a replacement router.
I reported the price quote to the manager, who had made the request for the router, and he told me to call the higher priced vendors and request them to beat the lower price. 
Since our purchasing power was a couple million dollars a year, they of course lowered the price.

At the end of those calls, I presented the price quotes again to the manager. 
He asked me who I called and I told him.
He then said, call the guy that provided the best price during the first round and request him, again, to beat the current lowest price.
It ran contrary to my core beliefs, as I knew the current price was already well below the vendors' cost for that item, but, I had little choice but to ask him for a better price - which he gave us, and I purchased the router.

I tell you this, because this was a clear case of penny wise, dollar foolish.
A $300 router was nothing compared to the inventory we bought from these guys.

It was a dirty play and everyone knew it, especially the new manager.
Interestingly enough, the price of a hinge increased 2 1/2 cents apiece the next month.

While that might not seem like much, when you purchase 100k hinges a year, the $75 saved on a router, turned into a $2500/year increase in the price of hinges, making it the most expensive router in the history of routers.

And that is why good relationships with your vendors and fair, competitive pricing and fair dealings on both sides, goes a long way.
Pay on time and allow for a fair profit for everybody.

Treat your vendors fairly and you will be treated fairly.
After employees, your vendors can be your greatest assets.


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## Desert_Woodworker (Jan 28, 2015)

Nice story- no better words to explain…

Ps- I will look into "nesting" the angels as you suggested… thx


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## DS (Oct 10, 2011)

*"Arrested"*

In the early days of our new custom shop, the Company Owner put three of his key employees in charge of getting it up and running.

We each had our specific areas of responsibilities.
We bought the new building and began filling it up with electrical, phones, air, vacuum and dust collection, as well as literally tons of machinery, tools and finishing equipment.

Part of the building upgrades was a new, state-of-the-art security system.
For this system, there was the keypad access code, a coercion code and a failsafe password in case of false alarms, or accidental triggers.

If the alarm were tripped, the phone would ring and you would have a brief conversation with the alarm company to dispel, or elevate their suspicions. (Depending on if you were the bad guy or not)

Also, there was a call list - a list of people to be notified in case of a break in or a fire, etcetera.

One Friday night (technically Saturday morning) at about 1am, I get a call from the alarm company. 
There had been a break in and they needed someone to come down and secure the building.

This was disturbing for two reasons:


First, it is 1am on a Saturday and I was sleeping.


Second, my name is 3rd down the list of people to call. 
I mean, where the heck were the other two guys? 
Did they just say no? 
Of the three of us, I lived the furthest away from the shop and it was a significant drive from my house.

By 2am, I groggily showed up at the shop to see a police scene that reminded me of that scene from Terminator 2, outside of Cyberdyne Systems - it was absolutely bonkers!
There were squad cars everywhere!

I provided the proper ID (I was on the list) and was allowed on the scene.

I walked past the officers towards the front door, only to see the company owner (the actual owner of this building), sitting out front on the sidewalk in handcuffs, being closely guarded by two of Mesa PD's finest.

He and his wife had been out on a date night late Friday and he decided to swing by and show off the progress on the new building before heading home.

He had the building's keys, but, unfortunately for him, he hadn't yet been read in on the alarm code, nor the security password to the new system before that night.
And most importantly, he was *not* on the list.

After he tripped the alarm and failed to provide the proper verbal passcode to the startled Alarm Monitor Technician, no amount of protests about how he "owned the place", or, it's "all a big misunderstanding", could keep him out of handcuffs.

To add insult to injury, we were later billed about $4,000 by the City of Mesa, for a police response to a false alarm call.

I didn't get back home until about about 3am, but I have to admit, the boss had a harder night than I did.

Oh, and first thing Monday morning, the boss was put on the call list - fourth in line, but, on the list nonetheless.

Oops.


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## Desert_Woodworker (Jan 28, 2015)

*DS-* I can't wait for you to get a little bit older and retire. But there will still be B.S. for it follows people regardless of age… Kidding aside I appreciate what you have done and what you do for woodworking…


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## DS (Oct 10, 2011)

Thank you.

I had forgotten this story until I was reminded of it just recently by one of my vendors.

BTW,
I am putting in 60 hour weeks right now.
We're trying to hire a second engineer to ease the workload.
My backlog is down from 28 jobs to 20 this week. 
(48 total projects in the Queue)

It probably pays better than teaching and remote working is definitely a possibility.
Just FYI.


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## DS (Oct 10, 2011)

So, this thread has been fairly entertaining, but, I am struggling to remember too many more stories of my own, so, I m putting the call out for you all to share with the rest of the group and post your stories up here for all to enjoy!


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