Just another day at the mill...
I'm just having another one of "those days".
It is Friday. The person whom I rely on to work in the shop has been out for a week. Which means that i not only have to handle all of the website stuff and (mostly) dumb questions that people ask (duh...are deese real gunz?), I am also supposed to handle all of the shop work, packing and shipping, walk-in customers, inspect and log in several crates of muskets AND listen to the bitching when people who are too dense to read the terms and conditions when ordering online while under the influence of alcohol at 2 AM (I call this OUI) can't grasp why the gun they ordered two days ago hasn't been faxed to them yet. Plus repairs.
Yesterday's mail brought me a USPS "Express Mail" package (cost the guy over $38 to mail it) containing a lock that is one of those "OhmyGodIneeditnowbecauseIhaveaneventcomingupOhMyGodOhMYGodOHMYGOD!!!" sorta deals. Supposedly, the lock suddenly stopped sparking.
I took it out of the package and using the flint they guy had installed in it, it sparked beautifully and I haven't been able to get it to NOT spark.
Last month I dealt with two large boxes of mostly perfectly good locks that units sent in for a "tuneup" or whatever. I don't know why people don't understand that warranties are for when things break due to part or workmanship issues, not periodic maintenance. The kicker is that we spent TWO FULL WORK DAYS going over these locks, and most of them were just fine...individual people in the units found out that the "armorer" (don't get me started on the people who call themselves "armorers" was sending in a few locks for frizzen hardening, so they figured they would send in their lock too, whether it needed it or not.
There is another guy who begged and name-dropped (a friend of a friend...that never works out well for me) who fancies himself a gunsmith and convinced me to sell him a barrel from a gun UPS smashed a decade ago. Of course, once he gets it, he can't actually work on it himself so he sends it back to me to work on it...then sends me constant questions asking when it will be done. All this for $75.
Today's mail brings me a lock from a Potzdam musket that includes the note about how the "hammer doesn't go back far enough to force frizzen forward". First of all, the part called a 'hammer" on a flintlock IS the frizzen. Second, the reason the COCK's geometry is messed up is because the sear is bent back upon itself from somebody forcing the trigger at half cock and bending it. In other words, this guy messed up his lock (or probably let some jackass "safety officer" at an event mess up his lock) then diagnoses it himself. This is the nonsense I have to deal with every day...people who don't know what they are doing telling ME what to do.
Also unfolding over this week is another scenario involving a bayonet where the guy asked me how to fit it to his musket. I replied with instructions in excruciating detail. He ignores them and goes at it his own way, ruining the bayonet and now wants ME to fit a bayonet for him.
All the while, some dumbass keeps calling several times a day to "check on" his order, despite the fact that he was already told that his gun isn't in yet and he will get a tracking number from UPS when it ships.
Did I mention all of this is going down right when I'm in the middle of rearranging the shop and things are in more disarray than usual?
Oh yeah, and I'm supposed to drop what I'm doing and go search in the garage for the lids to plastic storage boxes that Wendy wanted me to throw away about 5 years ago because she now wants to use them.
This would be a great day to go on a machete-slashing rampage at a mall. Too bad there aren't any malls around here. Oh well, I guess I'll go an an expedition into the garage in search of storage box covers...but I'm bringing my machete, just in case.
It is Friday. The person whom I rely on to work in the shop has been out for a week. Which means that i not only have to handle all of the website stuff and (mostly) dumb questions that people ask (duh...are deese real gunz?), I am also supposed to handle all of the shop work, packing and shipping, walk-in customers, inspect and log in several crates of muskets AND listen to the bitching when people who are too dense to read the terms and conditions when ordering online while under the influence of alcohol at 2 AM (I call this OUI) can't grasp why the gun they ordered two days ago hasn't been faxed to them yet. Plus repairs.
Yesterday's mail brought me a USPS "Express Mail" package (cost the guy over $38 to mail it) containing a lock that is one of those "OhmyGodIneeditnowbecauseIhaveaneventcomingupOhMyGodOhMYGodOHMYGOD!!!" sorta deals. Supposedly, the lock suddenly stopped sparking.
I took it out of the package and using the flint they guy had installed in it, it sparked beautifully and I haven't been able to get it to NOT spark.
Last month I dealt with two large boxes of mostly perfectly good locks that units sent in for a "tuneup" or whatever. I don't know why people don't understand that warranties are for when things break due to part or workmanship issues, not periodic maintenance. The kicker is that we spent TWO FULL WORK DAYS going over these locks, and most of them were just fine...individual people in the units found out that the "armorer" (don't get me started on the people who call themselves "armorers" was sending in a few locks for frizzen hardening, so they figured they would send in their lock too, whether it needed it or not.
There is another guy who begged and name-dropped (a friend of a friend...that never works out well for me) who fancies himself a gunsmith and convinced me to sell him a barrel from a gun UPS smashed a decade ago. Of course, once he gets it, he can't actually work on it himself so he sends it back to me to work on it...then sends me constant questions asking when it will be done. All this for $75.
Today's mail brings me a lock from a Potzdam musket that includes the note about how the "hammer doesn't go back far enough to force frizzen forward". First of all, the part called a 'hammer" on a flintlock IS the frizzen. Second, the reason the COCK's geometry is messed up is because the sear is bent back upon itself from somebody forcing the trigger at half cock and bending it. In other words, this guy messed up his lock (or probably let some jackass "safety officer" at an event mess up his lock) then diagnoses it himself. This is the nonsense I have to deal with every day...people who don't know what they are doing telling ME what to do.
Also unfolding over this week is another scenario involving a bayonet where the guy asked me how to fit it to his musket. I replied with instructions in excruciating detail. He ignores them and goes at it his own way, ruining the bayonet and now wants ME to fit a bayonet for him.
All the while, some dumbass keeps calling several times a day to "check on" his order, despite the fact that he was already told that his gun isn't in yet and he will get a tracking number from UPS when it ships.
Did I mention all of this is going down right when I'm in the middle of rearranging the shop and things are in more disarray than usual?
Oh yeah, and I'm supposed to drop what I'm doing and go search in the garage for the lids to plastic storage boxes that Wendy wanted me to throw away about 5 years ago because she now wants to use them.
This would be a great day to go on a machete-slashing rampage at a mall. Too bad there aren't any malls around here. Oh well, I guess I'll go an an expedition into the garage in search of storage box covers...but I'm bringing my machete, just in case.
posted by MVTCoPete | 10:42 AM
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