I just read that 10 pager on your Springfield lathe and wondered if you ever got the bed ground.
Did you sent it to Schaeffer in LA?
-No, but I damn well should have. Or Commerce, or just about anywhere else.
Without making this too big a story, as shipping such a heavy unit from up here in Alaska was going to be so expensive, I made arrangements with a friend to haul it. He was driving down with an empty trailer, and was going to bring a car back up.
For a few hundred in gas money, He'd swing the bed (and some other parts) by the grinder. He was already heading for California, but was going to wind up some 300 miles short of LA. He didn't want to try and drive the truck and trailer into LA and back, let alone twice- once to drop it off, and again to pick it back up.
So we made arrangements to drop it off at Carr's in Vancouver- the driver had to make a slight detour, but it wasn't bad.
As the page notes, I got everything packed up, he picked 'em up, and we had arrangements for him to meet Carr.
And then he didn't leave for another four months. By the time he dropped the bed off, our window of opportunity had passed, and Carr couldn't get to it right away- the immediate issue being that the driver couldn't pick it back up on his return trip. So instead of a few hundred in gas money, now I'm looking at $2,500 to $3,500 just in return shipping.
And that's IF I ever get the goddam things back. Carr, as many might know, is now closing down and selling off his shop. You can actually see the corner of my bed in a couple of his sales photos.
He's assured me he'll finish off my parts and get them shipped out before he has to vacate the building, but that's something like only two months away, and the parts have already been sitting in his shop for sixteen.
I still have confidence, waning though it may be, in Carr- many PM'ers recommended him and his work rather heartily- but I may well also wind up a victim of circumstance. A best-case scenario may well wind up with me just paying to have it all shipped to Schaffer or Commerce, paying
them to have the work done, and then paying whatever it costs to get it all shipped back up here.
Which I can see pushing $10-$12K or more.
We'll see. I haven't given up hope yet, but it's getting pretty thin by this point.
Doc.