I've received a couple less than cordial communications lately asking why axes are taking so long, and even more concerning; accusing me of shipping axes out of order for nefarious reasons.
I decided to take some time to put together a formal post so as to get this information out in the interest of transparency. Your support and business has been amazing and I'm very grateful, and want to keep things above board as much as possible.
To start, i want to give you all an overview of my process to help get everyone on the same page.
- To make the molds I have to inject liquid wax into the mold, wait an hour, then remove it, clean it up of stray wax and fill in any voids that might have formed because of air bubbles or the wax behaving funky.
- In this process I have approximately 1 in every 5 waxes either brake during removal, or have some other catastrophic problem that forces me to melt it back down and try again. Some models have failure rates as high as 1 in 3.
- On top of normal failures, periodic accidents happen such as bumping a tray or dropping a model and then the broken models have to be melted down and re-done.
- I typically get 5-15 waxes made / day, but have to balance wax time against grinder time so I'm not making waxes every day.
- With all of those considerations in place, I try to produce extras of each model while working on a batch but sometimes the universe just shits on me and I'm not able to make that happen before I'm forced to take a batch to the foundry so that all of the other axes aren't stuck waiting so I can re-make models.
- In such cases; the designs that get shorted typically get OVER made in the next batch but there's typically 3-4 weeks in between batches so that's a built in delay I can't avoid right now.
Step 2. Once the foundry has the waxes, they have their own internal process to turn my waxes into steel and there are two important issues to address with regards to the foundry:
- When I started this process, the foundry was turning around batches in 3 weeks. Due to Covid, a lot of companies that used to have work done outside of the US have brought their business back. The foundry is now telling me 9 weeks for delivery but I've had it go as long as 12 weeks. My 50 - 100 axes are a drop in the bucket compared to other companies that are placing orders by the tens of thousands, so I get squeezed in when they can. I don't really have any leverage here because shipping wax models to another foundry is a no go. They are too fragile, as is I have to hand deliver the waxes every time.
Step 3. Once I get the heads back there are 3 stages before I can ship them out.B. At the foundry there is some attrition on waxes as well. Their employees can drop them while setting them up on the tree, they can get damaged during the process of creating the ceramic shell, the shells can break before the metal is poured and even rarely, they'll have errors in the pouring process where they use the wrong metal, or the metal doesn't fill the shell completely. They tell me I should expect a 5% attrition based on their history, and statistically this shouldn't be a major problem. 5% of 100 axes is only 5 axes. When all 5 of those axes happen to be the same model however because an entire tree is broken or lost, that really screws with my production planning. I typically only deliver 5-15 each of each design per batch. Losing 5 of a batch of 5 has happened to me and it sucks.
Stage 1 - If the wax models warp or droop prior to casting I end up getting warped axes and I have to hire a blacksmith to bang them back into correct alignment.
- This can happen because I pull the wax out of the mold too soon, or they get warm enough at some point before they reach the refrigerators at the foundry. Somewhere in the mid 70's is apparently too warm. I learned this because of the ~150 axes I delivered in July on a 100 degree day, even with my AC blasting at full the entire drive, the cab of my truck got warm enough that 132 of the 137 axes that came back to me had warped blades.
- Typically the blacksmith needs 1-2 weeks to get to my axes. With the July batch however, he had a massive decorative wrought iron railing order come in for some mansion in Park City and my project sat in his shop for 5 weeks before he finally confessed that he wasn't going to get to my axes for a while yet. I had to go through 3 other blacksmiths before I found someone that had time to take my business, and he's part time though, and I'm getting them from him in smaller batches while he works through them. They will All be done before Thanksgiving.
Stage 2 - The axes have to be hardened. This is actually the least complicated part of the process. I use a facility that literally takes up 1/2 of a city block. They have huge underground molten salt furnaces and they harden parts 6 days a week for people. Because I use 4140 steel, they're commonly able to slip my axes in with other 4140 parts, but this still takes about 1 week.
Stage 3 - I do the grinding, blasting, handles and sharpening and shipping. At this stage there is still the possibility of inventory attrition. It has happened multiple times now where I have discovered large ceramic inclusions in the bit of the axe (large to me is anything over the size of a altoid mint) and I have to scrap it.
All of the above factors contribute to really messing up my production schedule.
In response to the questions about shipping axes out of order. This does happen, but only because I'm only able to finish axes that make it through the gauntlet. If I don't have a Valkyrie in hand (it's the most popular axe i have) but I can fill an order for a Flamingo, I do. I do not however skip people in the line. Orders are filled on a first come, first served basis for all axes according to inventory availability.
In response to the axes taking a long time to deliver. Yes it's stretching out much longer than I would like, and when the waits goes beyond 2 months, I reach out to those affected to try to make up for it.
I'd like to blame all of the delays on the foundry and blacksmith, but it would be disingenuous of me. This is a side hustle for me and I typically can only work 5-10pm on the weeknights and Saturdays. Because I also have a family, I'm not able to get into the shop 6 days / week.
More importantly, I'm taking steps to minimize delays due to attrition by turning around and investing my profits back into the business. in Mid Oct I delivered over 150 waxes to the foundry and will be delivering another big batch later this month so that I can start to build up surplus. Unless my order volume doubles, by January some time, I should have 10-15 spare heads that I can start delivering right away. I've also hired someone to make the waxes for me so I don't have to choose between wax and grinder time.
I'm also still working on the 3D printer angle. Once I have all the kinks worked out, in theory, all of the problems associated with the wax models will go away, including any need for blacksmith intervention. Additionally the time required for me to do the finish work will go down. I'm hoping to go from 3-5 axes / night to 8-10 axes / night.
As always, if you have any future questions or comments, feel free to reach out to me. Phone, text or email, i can typically squeeze in quick responses during the day. Once I'm in the shop though, I don't typically hear my phone alerts.
Taylor