Posted by Brian in Oregon ntxt on Thursday, June 28, 2001 at 5:34PM :
In Reply to: Re: Peterson Disk Brakes posted by Steve Kanavas on Thursday, June 28, 2001 at 1:55PM :
I had a small home based business in the 1980s providing machine shop service to the model railroad community. I made more than enough money to pay off all my milling machines, tooling, etc., and was getting ready to have molds cut to have metal parts cast by the thousands. Molds are not cheap.
I also had products. I would take the metal frames from popular model diesel locomotives and remachine the cast zinc fuel tanks to other configurations, saving the owner a lot of grief as it wasn't easy to do with a hacksaw, Dremel and file. I had end mills cut to the proper scale contours for exact replicas.
I got threatened with a lawsuit because a kid left his dad's model locomotive on the stairs and the dad tripped on it and broke his leg. And this was MY fault?
Had a bunch of stolen mail, that didn't help. Plus what I considered to be far too many bounced checks.
The local model RR club I belonged to and spent many hours making scale buildings for their layout decided I should be an associate member instead of a full member, stripping me of voting rights and 24/7 club access. Why? They made up a clause that work had to be done at the club prem, not off prem. You had to put in so many hours for vote credits (not one man one vote but like stock). If that was a rule, fine, but some of those who made up this rule also worked exclusively off prem. I quit the club and did not do freebie machining anymore for the members, some of whom screwed me.
Then I went through a period of returning orders and checks because the company that made the castings not only got raided by the INS but also by the EPA, and they shut down for almost a year. No frames to machine once I ran out of stock. Finally the situation got better.
The icing on the cake was a company that repowered model locomotives with special low rpm motors for realism. They asked me to make up samples of all my products and wanted me to set up for larger scale production for them. I told them no problem, I was already set up, and sent them samples. They were even going to furnish the frames.
After a couple of months go by I call to see what the status is. What I found out is that they took my machine work down the street to another shop and had them duplicate it.
I finally said **** this, packed up everything, stuffed it in the attic and haven't looked at it in 11 years.
This may sound like a nickel-dime business, and maybe it was. But I had magazine ads, write-ups, and more mail than I could handle.
So I can sympathize with the troubles small businessmen go through. Even the Capitalist Buzzards.
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