Fixed steadies on the lathe.

[Alpha1]

Not going to repeat my self except to say bored bored bored.
My main lathe is a typical Chinese hobby lathe. (Typing that in actually made me cringe and definitely made me feel guilty)
In fact I am not going to finish this post.

Except to say please accept my apologies. But this is how bad this Chinese thing really is. They need to be made to pay for this.

[Pippin89]

Here is the thing with Chinese manufacturing. If you send some drawings to China and say I need this made as cheaply as possible. They will make it cheaper than any European company could possibly do it and it will be terrible. Therefore, when something is needed cheaply it is usually sent to China so they get the reputation for making cheap crap.
However, if you send a drawing to a Chinese manufacturer and say "I need this, and I need it to conform to these specs, and last this long etc." then they will make exactly what you asked for, for slightly less than an equivalent European part and pretty much as good. They are capable, its just that its not what normally gets sent there. In the rail industry we use Chinese parts all the time.

[redcat]

People, both individuals and businesses, are not going to stop buying Chinese goods. As stated above, price is a deciding factor for some people. As far as quality goes I have some Chinese bore snakes which cost between £2.25 and £3.00 each, post free from China, and are just as good as the American version. Some years ago I bought battery operated clock movements direct from China at 99p each including postage - they are still going strong. Dave, I suspect that the mechanisms you use in your pens may come from that part of the World.

Redcat

[Alpha1]

People, both individuals and businesses, are not going to stop buying Chinese goods. As stated above, price is a deciding factor for some people. As far as quality goes I have some Chinese bore snakes which cost between £2.25 and £3.00 each, post free from China, and are just as good as the American version. Some years ago I bought battery operated clock movements direct from China at 99p each including postage - they are still going strong. Dave, I suspect that the mechanisms you use in your pens may come from that part of the World.

Redcat

Yes they do. The pen bits originally come from Taiwan or China. Some of the tooling I am sure also comes from China.It is recognized that the Taiwan versions are of a better quality. My problem is as much as I would like to ditch the Chinese versions I have £600 of stock tied up in them. Obviously once they are assembled as pens and sold on I stand to make a profit. But I can not really afford to ditch £600 worth of stock. Fortunately even in the current climate I am still receiving orders for them. As off to day I will be asking my suppliers were the bits come from and if possible avoid buying Chinese. Some of the stuff comes from America such as triple start taps and dies but they are mega expensive a single tap costs me £165 and I have quite a few of them. The Nibs for my fountain pens come from Germany and are also not cheap.
Anyway that,s enough of that this is not a pen forum.

[Lancs Lad]

if we were all to do what our conscience directs us to do, China would be in for a very large economic hit. However, people being people .... I can see there being a slight reduction in trade but nothing more. Money talks (unfortunately).

LL