On Jan 4, 6:06 pm, "SonomaProducts.com" wrote:
Is woodfinishing supplies still alive? I loved those guys. Their
website was a bit wierd, kind of a bunch of PDFs but the store was
great. I used to vacation in Mendocino just so I could visit. I think
there was some controversy when they closed about who owned what ro
bough the name or something.

Good memory. It is, but not as we used to know it. About 10 (?)
years ago I got an email from Russ Ramirez, the guy that started it,
saying he was thinking of quitting. Shortly after that, he retooled,
then decided to quit anyway.

He was a professional finisher/refinisher that loved what he did,
found some great products and wanted to make a few bucks other than
when sanding and finishing.

But he found there were too many "experts" to deal with on the
internet, some had even read part of a book, or read a whole magazine
article (!!) and looked at a picture to learn finishing. He got tired
of putting out fires in the hobby finishing community, and sadly, a
lot of the problem was his fault.

He gave folks WAAAAAYYYYY too much credit for experience in finishing,
too much credit that they would listen to someone that had been doing
it professionally for 20 years when they offered advice for free, and
he was just plain too nice. He would try to explain how something he
said was taken out of context, or how he was misquoted. And he did
that on several different venues, trying to defend his reputation and
product against the internet loudmouths that like to bludgeon people
with their opinion. It was just too much. Russ never did understand
why folks responded poorly to someone that was experienced and
knowledgeable that was trying to help out.

He tried to be too helpful. He was my go-to guy for shellac flakes
after O'deen decided to go play with his grandkids, so we emailed or
spoke often. My opinion was that he owed his clients a good product
delivered at a fair price in a timely fashion.

Russ was thinking he was "building his clientele" by working with
folks when they called in after messing up their projects. He spent
hours teaching and talking to argumentative idiots, casting his pearls
before swine. This was about the time that the graduates of Google U
began to crawl out from under the rocks, so people asked and argued
about the most incredibly unimportant minutiae you can imagine just to
try to impress him. What a way to waste your days.

He sold it all for what he told me was much too little to cut his
losses, and sadly stopped all contact with those that like him and
respected him. Sad. He tried to hang onto (I think, not sure) the
shellac business, but in the end I think he gave that up, too. He was
exhausted physically and mentally.

I hadn't thought about Russ in so long that when I went to the addy
book, it didn't even ring a bell.

What a great guy he was.

Robert