In article ,
steamer wrote:

...but my biggest mistake was probably "Z-Key", a hex key that fits
in a tight place and has plenty of torque. Sounds like a good idea but after
I spent something like $20k on tooling I found I couldn't even give them
away. Sigh.

Sounds interesting. I for one would be interested to hear more about it,
if it's not too painful to discuss.

Speaking of painful to discuss:

Without a doubt, bar none, my biggest boondoggle (ongoing, slowly) is my
shop & house project. I'm severely allergic to burying my butt in loans,
and I have been throughly disgusted with various shoddy crap I've found
in dealing with multiple houses built by others over the course of time,
so I wanted one where I could look in the mirror and complain straight
to the idiot that screwed things up.

The house is still a figment, the shop is going up first. Land was
bought in 1998. A backhoe was bought in 1999. Driveway through the woods
took a while. Concrete was poured and much progress made in 2003. Since
then, things have slowed down a lot. It's still more of a construction
project than a place I can actually get woodworking and metalworking
done. I'd no doubt be further along if I was cursing some idiot's shoddy
construction, and paying to heat their crappy insulation, and (ewww)
paying interest at the frigging bank.

Should be nice whenever it's finally done, but in hindsight I should
have bought the house with a garage and two shops that came on the
market at a tolerable (but mortgage needed) price a couple years after
we bought the land.

Still, not a cent borrowed so far.

As for having someone else do the work - other than my concrete
contractor, I've yet to find anyone to do the work right - in fact, the
other major thing I contracted out needs to be fixed, still, as the roof
is definitely sub-par.

If doing it over, I'd make it larger area and one story, as the second
story (staging, getting stuff up there, etc) is a big part of what's
taking so long.

--
Cats, coffee, chocolate...vices to live by