--Hey, gang, if any of you are going to be in Visalia this weekend
(Oct 21-23) I've got a truckload of surplus stuff from my workshop I'm
trying to off. Included in the load a
-Servo Products cnc retrofit pkg for Bridgeport mill, mostly
complete
-Vertical axis rotary bending machine
-Horizontal axis roller; i.e. the kind that can roll various radii
on square or round tube, bar, etc
--I've got some other stuff for sale but it was too bulky to fit
in the truck; with luck I'll have it all posted to my website next week
sometime. Tryin' to drum up empty space and full wallet to upgrade to a
better tig welder, heh.

--
"Steamboat Ed" Haas : When does Inuyasha get
Hacking the Trailing Edge! : to bone Kagome??
http://www.nmpproducts.com/intro.htm
---Decks a-wash in a sea of words---

On Sat, 22 Oct 2005 00:50:52 GMT, steamer wrote:

--Hey, gang, if any of you are going to be in Visalia this weekend
(Oct 21-23) I've got a truckload of surplus stuff from my workshop I'm
trying to off. Included in the load a
-Servo Products cnc retrofit pkg for Bridgeport mill, mostly
complete
-Vertical axis rotary bending machine
-Horizontal axis roller; i.e. the kind that can roll various radii
on square or round tube, bar, etc
--I've got some other stuff for sale but it was too bulky to fit
in the truck; with luck I'll have it all posted to my website next week
sometime. Tryin' to drum up empty space and full wallet to upgrade to a
better tig welder, heh.


Cool! Ill be there with a truckload of stuff too, including a Monkey
Wards badged Logan lathe I picked up today. Looks pretty good after
running it through the car wash.

Ill have a Burke Production miller, Porter Cable 4" vertical belt
sander on factory stand. a Thompson Table, various chucks, rotary
table, plastic drops of all sorts..yada yada yada

Gunner

"Pax Americana is a philosophy. Hardly an empire.
Making sure other people play nice and dont kill each other (and us)
off in job lots is hardly empire building, particularly when you give
them self determination under "play nice" rules.

Think of it as having your older brother knock the **** out of you
for torturing the cat." Gunner

Gunner Asch wrote:
On Sat, 22 Oct 2005 00:50:52 GMT, steamer wrote:


--Hey, gang, if any of you are going to be in Visalia this weekend
(Oct 21-23) I've got a truckload of surplus stuff from my workshop I'm
trying to off. Included in the load a
-Servo Products cnc retrofit pkg for Bridgeport mill, mostly
complete
-Vertical axis rotary bending machine
-Horizontal axis roller; i.e. the kind that can roll various radii
on square or round tube, bar, etc
--I've got some other stuff for sale but it was too bulky to fit
in the truck; with luck I'll have it all posted to my website next week
sometime. Tryin' to drum up empty space and full wallet to upgrade to a
better tig welder, heh.



Cool! Ill be there with a truckload of stuff too, including a Monkey
Wards badged Logan lathe I picked up today. Looks pretty good after
running it through the car wash.

Ill have a Burke Production miller, Porter Cable 4" vertical belt
sander on factory stand. a Thompson Table, various chucks, rotary
table, plastic drops of all sorts..yada yada yada

Gunner

"Pax Americana is a philosophy. Hardly an empire.
Making sure other people play nice and dont kill each other (and us)
off in job lots is hardly empire building, particularly when you give
them self determination under "play nice" rules.

Think of it as having your older brother knock the **** out of you
for torturing the cat." Gunner

sounds like it is time for you to take a road trip, say.... to the east
coast, come make a trade on a benchmaster........

--Back home already; very weird experience. 'Spect I'll write
it all up in a day or two but I gotta get it all down first. Never been
mugged in public before, but it happened! ****ed off porker who
outweigs me by a good hundred pounds and who, I found out later,
is the guy in charge of the whole shebang, buttonholes me while I'm
walking around the show and demands I pay him a commission for
something a friend and I shook hands on in the parking lot! Drove my
truckload of stuff over to the loading dock earlier but they were too
busy and couldn't be bothered to unload my stuff and they wouldn't let
me run the forklift (two sitting there idle, nobody to run 'em), so I
parked in the lot and go check out the show. Meanwhile a friend who saw
my stuff made an offer, we shook hands and that's that. So do you all
think I should pay fifteen percent to the fat boy? Didn't seem fair to
me at the time. Found out later why he was such a dickhead, though.
Turns out there was a guy at the show last year who tried to do a bunch
of business selling used tools and then tried to stiff the guy for the
commissions. Wanna guess who this particular dickhead was? Well far be
it from me to sling mud and besides I don't have all of this written in
stone, it was just nattered in my ear this afternoon and I've had that
particular creep killfiled for a while anyway.
--Aside from management, everone else at the show was great.
Hope to post photos in a week or so; still gotta go thru the photos I
took the previous weekend at Jacques Littlefield's place..

--
"Steamboat Ed" Haas : When does Inuyasha get
Hacking the Trailing Edge! : to bone Kagome??
http://www.nmpproducts.com/intro.htm
---Decks a-wash in a sea of words---

If they were too busy to unload you and you did the deal outside with
your friend then no commission. If you had gone inside and "sold" to
complete strangers then you would owe a commission. Just my take.

BTW I would probably outweigh you by 200 lbs.
weight has nothing to do with honesty.

Bill


On Sun, 23 Oct 2005 02:48:23 GMT, steamer wrote:

--Back home already; very weird experience. 'Spect I'll write
it all up in a day or two but I gotta get it all down first. Never been
mugged in public before, but it happened! ****ed off porker who
outweigs me by a good hundred pounds and who, I found out later,
is the guy in charge of the whole shebang, buttonholes me while I'm
walking around the show and demands I pay him a commission for
something a friend and I shook hands on in the parking lot! Drove my
truckload of stuff over to the loading dock earlier but they were too
busy and couldn't be bothered to unload my stuff and they wouldn't let
me run the forklift (two sitting there idle, nobody to run 'em), so I
parked in the lot and go check out the show. Meanwhile a friend who saw
my stuff made an offer, we shook hands and that's that. So do you all
think I should pay fifteen percent to the fat boy? Didn't seem fair to
me at the time. Found out later why he was such a dickhead, though.
Turns out there was a guy at the show last year who tried to do a bunch
of business selling used tools and then tried to stiff the guy for the
commissions. Wanna guess who this particular dickhead was? Well far be
it from me to sling mud and besides I don't have all of this written in
stone, it was just nattered in my ear this afternoon and I've had that
particular creep killfiled for a while anyway.
--Aside from management, everone else at the show was great.
Hope to post photos in a week or so; still gotta go thru the photos I
took the previous weekend at Jacques Littlefield's place..

steamer wrote:

****ed off porker who
outweigs me by a good hundred pounds and who, I found out later,
is the guy in charge of the whole shebang, buttonholes me while I'm
walking around the show and demands I pay him a commission for
something a friend and I shook hands on in the parking lot!

If he laid hands on you he commited assault. You should have called
the Police and filed a report. If this is the guys normal pattern of
operation, the cops get wise about it eventually and will do something
about it in most jurisdictions. What is he going to do, ban you from
a public venue?



Wes

wrote:
: If he laid hands on you he commited assault. You should have called
--No, nothing like that happened, but hey, when a guy who looks
like he teaches bar bouncers gets angry in my face I ...pause before
saying anything that might cause him to lay hands on me. I've been
mugged twice and held at gunpoint once; the feeling this guy exuded was
much the same.
--I decided right then and there that this show was no fun and
took the rest of my toys, still unloaded, and went home. I'll flog it
on ebay and I won't have to deal with in-my-face dickheads any more.
The sad thing, in my opinion, is the event that made him that way; he's
become his own worst enemy and I don't see a rosy future for the event.
--Which brings up another point: I went to the first event,
had to skip the second one and went to this, the third one. I was
saddened to see that the event has not grown one whit. I don't thing
there were more than three or four contraptions that I would describe
as "new" since my first trip there. It makes me wonder if other folks have
had similar doses of this guy's version of "hospitality" and have
decided to stay home.

--
"Steamboat Ed" Haas : When does Inuyasha get
Hacking the Trailing Edge! : to bone Kagome??
http://www.nmpproducts.com/intro.htm
---Decks a-wash in a sea of words---

On Sun, 23 Oct 2005 05:20:36 -0400, wrote:

steamer wrote:

****ed off porker who
outweigs me by a good hundred pounds and who, I found out later,
is the guy in charge of the whole shebang, buttonholes me while I'm
walking around the show and demands I pay him a commission for
something a friend and I shook hands on in the parking lot!

If he laid hands on you he commited assault. You should have called
the Police and filed a report. If this is the guys normal pattern of
operation, the cops get wise about it eventually and will do something
about it in most jurisdictions. What is he going to do, ban you from
a public venue?

Boy, truth is stranger than fiction. That's great advertising
material he's writing for himself there! "Come to the Visalia
machinists show, where if the Owner of the show thinks he's being
cheated out of a few bucks on a private party sale held outside the
show, he'll rough you up to get it!" Hell, with a description like
that, I'd be first in line... NOT.

I realize there are two sides to every story, but he's going to have
to work to top that one.

-- Bruce --

--
Bruce L. Bergman, Woodland Hills (Los Angeles) CA - Desktop
Electrician for Westend Electric - CA726700
5737 Kanan Rd. #359, Agoura CA 91301 (818) 889-9545
Spamtrapped address: Remove the python and the invalid, and use a net.

On Sun, 23 Oct 2005 02:48:23 +0000, steamer wrote:


Turns out there was a guy at the show last year who tried to do a bunch
of business selling used tools and then tried to stiff the guy for the
commissions. Wanna guess who this particular dickhead was?

Who was it? I would like to know the dealers I'm working with.

"rastus" wrote in message
news
On Sun, 23 Oct 2005 02:48:23 +0000, steamer wrote:


Turns out there was a guy at the show last year who tried to do a bunch
of business selling used tools and then tried to stiff the guy for the
commissions. Wanna guess who this particular dickhead was?

Who was it? I would like to know the dealers I'm working with.

I'd like to know too, in private email if that's better.

Mike

On Sun, 23 Oct 2005 02:48:23 GMT, steamer wrote:

--Back home already; very weird experience. 'Spect I'll write
it all up in a day or two but I gotta get it all down first. Never been
mugged in public before, but it happened! ****ed off porker who
outweigs me by a good hundred pounds and who, I found out later,
is the guy in charge of the whole shebang, buttonholes me while I'm
walking around the show and demands I pay him a commission for
something a friend and I shook hands on in the parking lot! Drove my
truckload of stuff over to the loading dock earlier but they were too
busy and couldn't be bothered to unload my stuff and they wouldn't let
me run the forklift (two sitting there idle, nobody to run 'em), so I
parked in the lot and go check out the show. Meanwhile a friend who saw
my stuff made an offer, we shook hands and that's that. So do you all
think I should pay fifteen percent to the fat boy? Didn't seem fair to
me at the time. Found out later why he was such a dickhead, though.
Turns out there was a guy at the show last year who tried to do a bunch
of business selling used tools and then tried to stiff the guy for the
commissions. Wanna guess who this particular dickhead was? Well far be
it from me to sling mud and besides I don't have all of this written in
stone, it was just nattered in my ear this afternoon and I've had that
particular creep killfiled for a while anyway.
--Aside from management, everone else at the show was great.
Hope to post photos in a week or so; still gotta go thru the photos I
took the previous weekend at Jacques Littlefield's place..


I found out you and I chatted in the parking lot. I was the tall
bearded guy in the cowboy hat.

Gunner

"Pax Americana is a philosophy. Hardly an empire.
Making sure other people play nice and dont kill each other (and us)
off in job lots is hardly empire building, particularly when you give
them self determination under "play nice" rules.

Think of it as having your older brother knock the **** out of you
for torturing the cat." Gunner

On Sun, 23 Oct 2005 21:12:32 GMT, Bruce L. Bergman
wrote:


If he laid hands on you he commited assault. You should have called
the Police and filed a report. If this is the guys normal pattern of
operation, the cops get wise about it eventually and will do something
about it in most jurisdictions. What is he going to do, ban you from
a public venue?

Boy, truth is stranger than fiction. That's great advertising
material he's writing for himself there! "Come to the Visalia
machinists show, where if the Owner of the show thinks he's being
cheated out of a few bucks on a private party sale held outside the
show, he'll rough you up to get it!" Hell, with a description like
that, I'd be first in line... NOT.

I realize there are two sides to every story, but he's going to have
to work to top that one.

-- Bruce --


Last year, I rented table space (no commissions paid when you rent
table space) and this year I went the commission route as I had much
less Stuff to sell (poor planning and a busy work schedule on my part)

I arrived about the same time as the "event" the OP talked about..and
the show owner was a bit tense. He may have, in one case, gone off
half cocked. Lots of machines were being transered in the parking lot,
the parking lot having been a handy place for parties to meet and
deliver items sold long long before the show. He is indeed a big old
boy..but I never felt anything of a threatening nature about him, and
I was around him for two days. And I tend to be rather sensitive
about such things...

When a buyer is in San Jose..and the seller is in San Diego..and they
know they are going to meet at the Show...its a natural and saves
shipping costs.

Shrug...I suspect the promoters may..may have broken even..maybe. Not
because of any bad feelings, yada yada... but because there were not
much in sales. Few people were buying anything of any big dollar
value, hence I suspect the commissions used to pay for the shows
expenses were pretty small.
Attendence was, to my eyes..very light compared to the two previous
years. Which means attendence fee incomes, also were small.

I sold very little..went home with much the same stuff I came with.
Shrug..except that Lorch lathe that had been paid for a year ago was
picked up by the owner (we managed to shoehorn it into a Volvo station
wagon...lol).

I advised the show owner of the deal, in full detail and he had no
problem with it. I also sold a big belt sander right off my truck,
before it made it inside, and had the consideration to advise the show
owner and pay the commission, even though technically I suppose I
didnt have to, but the show expenses had to be paid.

I also volunteered to stay behind and do a lot of the show
breakdown..I broke down all the pipe air lines, used my truck to tow
the trailer mounted air compressor back to the rental place..etc etc.
Seems like most folks simply packed up and boggied rather than
offering to lend a hand.

Based on my expenses..I just about broke even, but did get to see some
neat stuff and get the wife out of the house for two days. Shrug..so
thats worth something.

I personally think that that was the last Visalia show. But I also
know that a number of people are very interested in keeping "The Show"
going, and plans will be made to reevaluate where, when, how and so
forth, and it will be an ongoing thing in the future. Bigger and
better.

As to previous comments made in this thread..there are indeed more
than one side to this story..and it hasnt been told. Nor is it my
place to do so. But..the owner wasnt quite the bad guy he was made
out to be. Shrug. As is obvious..there were more than one temper
tantrum thrown.

And if a person wants to go see " lots of new stuff"..I suggest you go
to Westec, or other commercial venues, not a meeting of hobbiests and
those that cater to them. It costs a huge amount of money to travel
across the country with your displays and wares, and some cant afford
to do so in a location that will not pay for their expenses to do so.
A bigger turnout last year would have encouraged more dealers to show
up.

As other attendees get home, Im sure that they will also have some
insights to post here.

Gunner, just giving his $0.02USD opinion.

"Pax Americana is a philosophy. Hardly an empire.
Making sure other people play nice and dont kill each other (and us)
off in job lots is hardly empire building, particularly when you give
them self determination under "play nice" rules.

Think of it as having your older brother knock the **** out of you
for torturing the cat." Gunner

Er...but Ebay items frequently sell for well over what they're worth
and could be obtained for elsewhere. If you're using Ebay as your
guide, then you probably won't be happy selling at a show.

Ignoramus4371 wrote:
My experience with similar but much smaller events, is that they may be
good for buyers and ebay resellers (with only occasional bargains),
but universally bad for sellers. A lot of time wasted and stuff is
hard to sell at a price above ebay price.

i

I was one the key figures in the scene Ed elaborated on though as the
buyer not as the fellow that got in his face. I will say that Ed's tale
is a little skewed in his favor though I wasn't there when the promoter
lashed out. I was also reprimanded by the promoter and immediately
began to try an rectify the situation. I think I was pretty succesful
and was in his good graces when I left the event.
Let me explain the situation from my take on the promoters point of
view. He really likes doing these shows and being involved with the
hobby metal workers. This is the third show in CA and Visalia and he
has taken a monetary bath each time attempting to get a viable event
going. One of his sources of income is commisions on sales of
equipment. He offers a venue where buyer and seller can get together
and in most cases should be compensated. I should have never made the
offer to purchase the piece Ed was offering as we were literally in the
entry way to the show. The promoter should have been a little more
tactful his is approach to both Ed and I. His concern wasn't just his
loss of commision but the fact that everyone seemed to be rushing
outside to do some "trading".
I think Ed also skewed the story I told him about Gunner. Gunner did
rent space last year and sold quite a bit of stuff. I will not repeat
the story I told Ed here as it was too long and complicated and his
brief summary was was unjustified.
This will be the last Visalia Show. Several people with a positive
attitude about the event, myself included, are looking for a new venue
and open to suggestions. Visalia is halfway between LA and SF but seems
to suffer because it is too far for metal workers to drive from either
direction. It is going to take 2000 attendees to make it work and they
are having trouble getting 1000. Some of this may be blamed on those
that didn't attend figuring they could make it next year. Well, they
just isn't going to be a next year.
On a lighter note I hope all of you that bought machines and tooling
from me enjoy making chips with the stuff. It was certainly my best
year in sales but I am mystified on why I had to bring home a decent
SBL heavy ten with collet closer and premium 3 jaw chuck. Asking price
was $1000. on the factory cabinet and delivery to either SF area or LA
area available. Leigh at MarMachine

--Thanks for clarification; I was a bit wild and
discombobulated in my postings.. And thanks for coming forward; I
really didn't want to post your name (or anyone else's) and have you
draw wrath, so to speak..
--I'm lookin' forward to the next gathering, so long as it's
*not* in Visalia. I figure if it's the Bay Area or Los Angeles folks
from out of town will at least have friends/relatives to visit and that
should pump up attendance. Also both of those areas offer attractions
beyond the event itself; more than one can say for Visalia..

--
"Steamboat Ed" Haas : When does Inuyasha get
Hacking the Trailing Edge! : to bone Kagome??
http://www.nmpproducts.com/intro.htm
---Decks a-wash in a sea of words---

On Tue, 25 Oct 2005 18:08:55 GMT, steamer wrote:

SNIP
--I'm lookin' forward to the next gathering, so long as it's
*not* in Visalia. I figure if it's the Bay Area or Los Angeles folks
from out of town will at least have friends/relatives to visit and that
should pump up attendance. Also both of those areas offer attractions
beyond the event itself; more than one can say for Visalia..


Hey Steamer,

My sentiments exactly. It needs to be held in the biggest place
possible. Or maybe better, how about a 4 year cycle, with suppose
year one in LA, year two in San Francisco, three in Seattle, and four
in San Diego or even Las Vegas. Might even be a better way, as I do
hear people complain about the "same stuff" every time, true or not
it's what they think.
Visalia one-way is a three or a four hour drive no matter what, double
for a round-trip! You can't do that reasonably and have a good
one-day outing. If you can't do it and have fun and see something
different in one day, then you'd have to stay over and make it a two
day deal, and for MOST people (not talking about the die-hard's here
on rcm!!) that's more time, money and effort than they want to spend.
And now the price of fuel is getting prohibitive too.
Maybe with a switching cycle of sites, we'd even see at least a
variation in vendors and exhibits. Sure, certain vendors will be
there for a show no matter where it is held, but maybe even more
certain would be their attendance if they thought they'd get more
"walk-by" trade. I recall the Cheddar guys at NAMES saying they really
enjoyed the feel of the show, but the foot traffic didn't compare to
the tens of thousands they got in the UK and Europe. Vendors want to
see thousands of people, not just hundreds of enthusiasts.

Take care.

Brian Lawson,
Bothwell, Ontario.