I see there a bunch of Biax Scrapers on eBay now.

[Richard King]

biax power scrapers: Search Result | eBay

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[Yan Wo]

Hi, Richard. Hope you are fully recovered and feeling great! Does anyone rent Biax scrapers? I can't justify buying one for the small amount of scraping I do, but I'd love to rent one for a week or two.

 

[Richard King]

I have rented mine a few times. One fellow sent it back a month late and never pad me the extra time. I had to threaten him with calling the Sherriff and telling all the Practical Machinist members. He sent it back. After that I had another guy send me a cashers check for $2500.00 that I held until he sent it back. It just became to much of a pain so I stopped. I believe Myles, from Texas talked about it once. I'm not sure what he did. The guys in Vallejo CA where I taught 2 classes have a club and they bought one together that they share.

 

[Conrad Hoffman]

The market must not be big enough to make competition worthwhile, thus the monopoly. Even the Chinese can't be bothered to clone one. Alas, at the price I could never justify it.

 

[Richard King]

The market must not be big enough to make competition worthwhile, thus the monopoly. Even the Chinese can't be bothered to clone one. Alas, at the price I could never justify it.

When I taught in Taiwan and talked to Chinese companies. They told me they will never make Power Scrapers because BIAX makes less then 1000 a year. They said they have to make Millions. There used to be one made on a flex shaft and another German one. Both are out of business. Biax makes all sorts of air grinders and meat cutting machines and the power scraper is their smallest product line. http://efa-germany.com/efa/index.php

 

[Richard King]

Myles (M.B Naegle) you liked my post...Please tell us about your plan to rent scrapers?

 

[M.B. Naegle]

Sorry, stepped away from the computer.

I'm still considering doing the rental thing, but still trying to determine if there is enough demand to support the investment. I don't want to get rich off of it or anything, but I of course need the service to pay for itself, even when UPS loses a package.

IMO, even at a hobby level, a power scraper is a massive boon on any project (unless you just enjoy the manual process), but as long as there are plenty of "good used" Biax's around at affordable prices, I'm happy to wait.

Biax Rental?

 

[marka12161]

I too have been contemplating buying a biax scraper. What is a fair price for a good used one these days? Asking (not necessarily selling) prices seem to be all over the map on ebay these days.

 

[M.B. Naegle]

I too have been contemplating buying a biax scraper. What is a fair price for a good used one these days? Asking (not necessarily selling) prices seem to be all over the map on ebay these days.

IMO, I follow the general pricing guide of good used starts at half what it would cost new, then goes down from there if it needs work. In other words, since you can buy a new Biax for $4000 (unless it's gone up again?), $2000 is a fair price for a good used one. You can deduct from that if it's an older model/generation with less support. I paid $800 for my old blue one 4 years ago and feel It was an honest price as the sliding head needed some work, added new bearings and cleaned and repainted it. I could have paid more for a better/newer one, but given my budget and non-aversion to projects and obsolete stuff, I'm happy with it.