I hope this isn't the wrong place for this, but I just wanted to kick off Monday by expressing my appreciation of and gratitude towards the folks - including many of all y'all - who make this crazy, often maddening pursuit, truly a pleasure, and a community I'm honored to be a part of.
I was just unboxing a roll of belts and realized what a pleasure it is to deal with that vendor, which led me to think of a couple more who go the extra mile and make me happy to send them my money. (Hope it's not inappropriate to mention names, and I have no relationship with any of the businesses.) Randy (or Ryan? sorry!) @ TruGrit spent a ton of Friday chatting with me and offering advice and talking about machinery - and made sure my order was hustled out the door asap. As always, the packaging was super and processing/shipping really prompt. Curtis @ TurnTex (the juice guy) is always helpful and ditto on the stuff showing up fast. Jessica @ AKS is always really responsive, has great advice, and they really try to talk through what I'm doing next, to help cut and package to save money on shipping. AutomationDirect bent over backwards and took a loss on a warranty replacement motor (1hp 3ph) - shipped me a new one, FedEx next day, their expense, and asked only for the label from the old one to be returned. Dang. Their tech support is amazing, too. And KB Electronics' superb tech support spent a LONG time troubleshooting a VFD, just to eliminate it as the motor problem (turns out it wasn't).
I'm sure other folks have their own lists like this, and I don't mean to endorse anyone on here, or offend what I'm sure are other great vendors I don't know by leaving them off - I just wanted to appreciate the ones I know.
Finally - I've not been here long, but am grateful from the bottom of my heart to all you folks who've given me thoughtful, helpful advice, whether directly to me, or through help to others (I do search first!
) Stacy in particular (I don't know where you find time to actually make any knives) but too many others to name. You all know who the usual suspects are, as well as some of us less exalted folks who have kicked in a "yeah, that one stumped me until I tried ____" here and there. There's always another way to do it, and no book could ever list all the little bits of knowledge it takes to go from sorta-competent to mastery. For that, I thank you all. Happy Monday - now get off your screen and go grind something! (Fresh belt! )
AndrewC
I was just unboxing a roll of belts and realized what a pleasure it is to deal with that vendor, which led me to think of a couple more who go the extra mile and make me happy to send them my money. (Hope it's not inappropriate to mention names, and I have no relationship with any of the businesses.) Randy (or Ryan? sorry!) @ TruGrit spent a ton of Friday chatting with me and offering advice and talking about machinery - and made sure my order was hustled out the door asap. As always, the packaging was super and processing/shipping really prompt. Curtis @ TurnTex (the juice guy) is always helpful and ditto on the stuff showing up fast. Jessica @ AKS is always really responsive, has great advice, and they really try to talk through what I'm doing next, to help cut and package to save money on shipping. AutomationDirect bent over backwards and took a loss on a warranty replacement motor (1hp 3ph) - shipped me a new one, FedEx next day, their expense, and asked only for the label from the old one to be returned. Dang. Their tech support is amazing, too. And KB Electronics' superb tech support spent a LONG time troubleshooting a VFD, just to eliminate it as the motor problem (turns out it wasn't).
I'm sure other folks have their own lists like this, and I don't mean to endorse anyone on here, or offend what I'm sure are other great vendors I don't know by leaving them off - I just wanted to appreciate the ones I know.
Finally - I've not been here long, but am grateful from the bottom of my heart to all you folks who've given me thoughtful, helpful advice, whether directly to me, or through help to others (I do search first!
) Stacy in particular (I don't know where you find time to actually make any knives) but too many others to name. You all know who the usual suspects are, as well as some of us less exalted folks who have kicked in a "yeah, that one stumped me until I tried ____" here and there. There's always another way to do it, and no book could ever list all the little bits of knowledge it takes to go from sorta-competent to mastery. For that, I thank you all. Happy Monday - now get off your screen and go grind something! (Fresh belt! )AndrewC