What is the appropriate time frame for "custom" work

[warfinge]

Yeah I agree that poor business managment is the problem here. So do you guys think that part of keeping the pressure on would be bellyacheing in all the forums about the deal? Since he wont answer posts or email?

[CoolHand]

I think a big part of what makes paintball custom work take so long is a conglomeration of things:

1) Paintballers always want unique, as in never done before. This takes time, if for no other reason than you have to puzzle out how you're going to accomplish what they want done. A lot of this time is spent staring at the parts and going "Hmmmmmmm"

2) Once you've decided what to do, and the customer is on board (which can be no small task in and of itself), you have to figure out how you're going to machine this new dohicky that's not been machined before (or that you've never machined before). This involves still more staring at the parts, your machine, the fixtures and tools you have available or can buy, and yet more going "Hmmmmmmm".

3) Now you can cut the part. If you've scratched your head long enough and made good notes, this part goes off without a hitch, and doesn't take a great deal of time (say two to ten days depending on how much stuff you've got to do).

4) After the machine work, there is clean-up and hand work to be done. The big difference between the work that someone like Doc or Punisher put out, and the work that Johnny Millright in his basement is that those fellows (Doc and Pun) are truly skilled at the hand finish work. THAT is the big difference in fit and finish when you get right down to it. Many folks can turn cranks, but not everyone can use a carbide scraper and a file to correct a tiny little blemish that otherwise would show horribly.

5) Now comes ano, and for me, this is the worst part of the project. You make pages of notes and instructions, carefully pack everything up, write the check, and ship it off, praying that it comes back in one piece, the right color and finish, and that it operates correctly when you reassemble it. This also typically takes from three weeks to four months, most of which we spend going "Grrrrrrrrrr" because the customers are really mad and can't understand why we can't just drive to Oregon to retrieve their $25 part.

6) All this work has been undertaken to do a job which at most cost $500. Now, where else in the world do you see anyone spend weeks and weeks doing something that will only net them about $300? No where. We do the work because we love it, not because it makes us rich.

7) However, love it or not, we still gotta eat. That means a day job for most of us, or for guys like Doc and Pun, way more work than they can do right this second, so they for sure always HAVE work to do (and thusly money coming in to live off of). This overbooking leads to delays, we all know it. In my case, since I work about 60 hrs a week at my "day" job, the paintball work lags behind until I actually have time to spend on it. We gots to pay the bills somehow, and cutting eye holes into PB gun bodies sure don't do it.

I know it's frustrating, it really is, and every one of these guys knows that. There just isn't anything really to be done about it. It always looks easier from the outside, trust me on this one, it's a lot harder on this side of the machine table.

Now, that said, I do agree that you shouldn't go AWOL on your customers. Staying in contact is one thing I try very hard to do, though I do not seek out the customers to update them, when they knock, I usually answer, if not right away, then in a day or two. If they get irritating, maybe I'll respond to every third or fifth email, but I still respond. Keep in mind though, it's a lot easier for me to do this, because my client list is very small (I'd say less than 200 a year when I was busy, and far fewer now). I can definitely see how it could take a week for Doc or Pun just to sort through their emails and bang out a response, so you gotta take that into account when you're talking with them, you're not going to get an immediate response so be patient.

[warfinge]

...... account when you're talking with them, you're not going to get an immediate response so be patient.

I agree with most of that. So lets define how much time you should wait for a response from your airsmith. Logic has a better track record for me than Lee so I would tend to listen a little harder when you opinionate. Is it alright to have a customer trying to contact you by email, private message and overt posts on YOUR forum for 6 months while you ignore them?
If not, how much "ignoring" is acceptable? week, a month? I am honestly not being sarcastic, I really want to define how much patience I should have. I could wait a lot more patiently with periodic updates. I have others on other boards saying they have waited more years and that I need to be more patient. It's almost like everyone is afraid to complain because he may quit or something.

[CoolHand]

I agree with most of that. So lets define how much time you should wait for a response from your airsmith. Logic has a better track record for me than Lee so I would tend to listen a little harder when you opinionate. Is it alright to have a customer trying to contact you by email, private message and overt posts on YOUR forum for 6 months while you ignore them?
If not, how much "ignoring" is acceptable? week, a month? I am honestly not being sarcastic, I really want to define how much patience I should have. I could wait a lot more patiently with periodic updates. I have others on other boards saying they have waited more years and that I need to be more patient. It's almost like everyone is afraid to complain because he may quit or something.

Well, I've seen how sparsely Pun posts on his own forums, and honestly, I think it's more because he IS working so hard rather than he actively ignoring you, that he doesn't get out on the forums much. If I see him post anywhere, it's there and over at Tinkering Tech, and even that is damned infrequent. I think Pun is just working his *** off and simply doesn't have much left at the end of the day to do anything but maybe eat something and crash.

And yes, I do think that most folks would rather wait for Punisher and Doc's work rather than ***** and ride them so hard that they finally snap and say "To hell with it!". Then no one who is waiting gets their stuff, and no one ever again will be able to have the fine things they produce.

You can't get blood out of a turnip, and you can only get so much out of a human being before they croak on you, so you just gotta be easy on how hard you squeeze.

I know that's not what you want to hear, but that's the way it is. BTW, have we ever done business? I don't recognize your handle, but maybe you're just a sneaky customer, flying under the radar, like. lol

When I deal with people, I usually wait two weeks to a month between emails if I hear anything back (frequency depending on how badly I needed the parts). I'd say if you don't hear from someone in a week, it's OK to send another email, but not ten or twelve in rapid succession. That sort of thing doesn't make you a sqeaky wheel, it makes you a spammer and usually gets you ignored on purpose.

[warfinge]

...... BTW, have we ever done business? I don't recognize your handle, but maybe you're just a sneaky customer, flying under the radar, like. lol

Oh I have been under this handle for years. Not much on AO but on others. More obscure boards like www.spyderea.net. I have one other handle I use at MCB because someone else took warfinge and thats MartyW. As far as the rep, I have heard of you, seen what I assume is your work and have heard nothing bad so in the absense of a corpse, you get the bennifit of the doubt

[CoolHand]

. . . . . so in the absense of a corpse, you get the bennifit of the doubt

LMAO

That's a good one, I'm gonna have to use that line sometime.

It is nice to see that not everyone assumes the worst, even when they've had troubles before.

I find that I have to force myself to be cynical when making business decisions, or I get screwed.

I try to give everyone the benifit of the doubt, but anymore (in this business anyway) I guess that just makes me easy to fool.

[Lenny]

JOE! (Speaking of custom work...) How's my UMF comming? PM/email/call me with an update. I haven't heard from you in a while. Also, we must play again. It's been too long.

[Lohman446]

Noone is willing to pay the rates on what it would take to keep a professional qualified shop going on custom, small run, projects. I'm going to go with this, I run an automotive shop, I would think that the techs I have working for me, if they had the proper training and desire, would be fully capable of working on any custom paintball project.

Average turn-around on most jobs is well under a day. "Big" jobs, we're talking engines, normally take about two days from customer authorization to completion - sometimes three. If a job is there for more than a week it becomes a problem to me that deserves 100% attention. Customers get updates at request, and time frames are reasonably accurate.

Now, I would think with the same amount of funds into equipment as the shop has, plus the same amount of training and pay for techs, that we could probably turn out custom paintball projects of whatever you wanted in a very very reasonable time frame.

Note: Shop rate is $50 an hour, and yes you would be billed from start to finish. Custom work takes time, and as has been noted before on this forum just polishing may take several hours. Are enough people willing to pay it for high quality, timely work to run a business? Probably not...

So you want high quality work but at a small fraction of the price. Guess what, the timeframe just went up dramatically. Frankly most people in the custom PB industry could make better money with less stress doing something else - they do this because they enjoy it. You are getting a "side" job. Well I do not agree with it you will not get the same turn around time, or communication, as a standard business. Frankly, nor are most players willing to pay the prices it would take to get what they want.

Edit: It should be noted, that to pay overhead, customer advisors, managers, etc. you have to have more than one person working full time (think at least three). So if you were thinking yeh, we could squeek out enough work to keep Coolhand busy, now you have to squeek out enough work to keep Coolhand, Doc, and Punisher busy, 40hrs a week.

[CoolHand]

Useful Posts Now = 7



Though I would like to point out that while automotive techs could do about 80% of what comes through our doors, that other 20% is a real *****. THAT is where the years of experience and skill as a machinist comes in mighty handy.

I dunno about the other guys mentioned, but I sure as hell wouldn't cut loose the service department of any dealership I've ever been to on my machine shop. Unless your guys are really something special, I'd wager you'd need to hire a machinist or two to make it actually work. Especially CNC stuff, you'd have to send a guy off for some schooling unless you do that sort of thing in-house already.

[Lohman446]

Useful Posts Now = 7



Though I would like to point out that while automotive techs could do about 80% of what comes through our doors, that other 20% is a real *****. THAT is where the years of experience and skill as a machinist comes in mighty handy.

I dunno about the other guys mentioned, but I sure as hell wouldn't cut loose the service department of any dealership I've ever been to on my machine shop. Unless your guys are really something special, I'd wager you'd need to hire a machinist or two to make it actually work. Especially CNC stuff, you'd have to send a guy off for some schooling unless you do that sort of thing in-house already.

I agree - I'm not necessarily meaning these exact personal I have. I am talking people with equivilant skill and training (albeit in a different area). Though light machine work has been done and I have the equipment it has been very light. I'm not necessarily saying make these same people do it, just mearly asserting that the level of technical expertise these people have is *roughly* equivilant to what one would need, in a different area.

[Doc Nickel]

Noone is willing to pay the rates on what it would take to keep a professional qualified shop going on custom, small run, projects.

-Bingo. That's the ultimate key, right there. No one wants to admit it, but that's the end-all, be-all answer to the question in this thread, and Brad's thread, and any others floating around.

If I worked in a typical job-shop machine shop, the shop would be charging you $75 an hour and I'd be getting paid $45 an hour. (Unless it was for NPS, who wanted to pay me $10 an hour to invent stuff for them, and thought they were being generous.)

You guys won't pay that. It's hard for me to get any kind of business if I wander north of $8 an hour. I get kids complaining about paying $10 to fix a stripped thread in their $600 electro.

You guys want a whole gun stripped, milled, polished, anodized, reassembled and adjusted, tuned and leak-checked and shipped home, all for less than $100. That's an hour of dismantling and stripping, three of milling, two of polishing, shipping to and from the anno shop, an hour of reassembly and testing, and more shipping.

You guys want to know why PK Selective quit doing anno for paintball guns? There's your answer right there. Piers was doing top-notch work, some of the best around, but paintballers only wanted to pay him McDonalds wages to do it. He did anno that no one else did then and still doesn't do now, and you guys said "hey, this other shop only does solid colors and won't polish, but they do it for $45. Can you match that?"

You guys complaining about wait times or costs? Go order a Gil Hibben custom knife, or a Clarke customized .45, or a Linebaugh custom Ruger. You're looking at $2,500 to $3,000 just to get on the waiting list, and you'll probably get the item you ordered today, sometime in 2011. When Clarke died, he had a waiting list over a hundred names long.

There have been times I had over a hundred and twenty active customers- that means I had their gun in the shop and on the bench, or they'd ordered a part I had to make. I easily recall days I'd carry two packages to the Post Office and return with three.

I don't care how quickly you think I or anyone else should be able to make a part, polish a gun, fix a leak or whatever. Even if each project only took half an hour including wrapping and packing and hauling it to the Post Office, that's still sixty hours, or a long week with overtime.

Do you think this only took me half an hour to mill, assemble, test, tune, wrap, pack, label and take to the PO? Did this only take a half-hour to mill and fit? I'm pretty sure it took me more than half an hour just to make the drop-forward for this. Six of the visible pieces of this gun and five on this body were made from raw block aluminum- and by the time it was done, that second one had added five more. Think all those just took half an hour in total? They took more than half an hour each! I think it took me over an hour just to do the soldering on this gun.

You guys have all read the sign:
"We do three kinds of work here: Good, Fast and Cheap. You may choose only two."

That's not a cliche, that's not just an empty slogan. Everybody wants cheap. I've probably had fewer than half a dozen customers in my near-decade in this business, that were essentially unconcerned with the cost. Everyone else either haggled, complained, wanted to trade junk, bounced a check or simply grumbled a bit. (Except for fixed-price "store" items- and even then I've had people try to haggle there as well.)

Everyone also wants good. I didn't get my reputation for doing slapdash duct-tape-and-baling-wire work, so I assume anyone that is asking me for mods or services wants the best I can do.

That leaves time as the one variable. And like the old man says, if you want it in three weeks, it'll be $75. If you want it in three days, it'll be $150. If you want it in three hours, it'll be $300. Take your pick.

Doc.

[warfinge]

Well sadly, nothing new to report. He has had time to prototype stuff and he claims to be sick again. Taking a couple of weeks off.

http://tinkersguild.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=622

Punisher won't answer my email but I did get an update!

http://www.network54.com/Forum/9013/message/1170162108/Hi+Lee