January New Product and Product Updates

It’s been awhile since I posted; about 3 weeks and it seems like forever.  We (the family) went to Costa Rica for a week and I am still trying to catch up on backorders and get back into the swing of operating this business.

A new product that we have just put into Production is a a direct copy of the famous Spring Winder developed by Kevork Fags years ago.  Don DeLoach was generous enough to provide his original to me so that we could copy it and make this wonderful tool available once again to all modelers.   To be clear, with this tool, you can wind springs (for DTs) in about 2 minutes.

It comes complete with a four-page, fully illustrated instruction manual for $35.

(springs not included)

Product Updates:

GOOD NEWS – GIZMO GEEZER

Finally, I am happy to announce that Gizmo Geezer has overcome his injection mold issues and I have a new supply of Gizmo Geezer Nose Buttons!  Order away – even more are on the way.

GOOD NEWS – CZECH PROPS

While I was away, I received a shipment of CZECH props – they are back in stock.

GOOD NEWS – COFFEE

We brought back three new products to add to our coffee line.  You can get it from my site or go to the boys’ coffee web site:  http://cafe-rica.com/

POSSIBLY GOOD NEWS – IKARA PROPS

I have an order in with Ikara for the gray 6″ outdoor props, an assortment of indoor props, and DT buttons.  They have assured me the order will be filled…sometime.

POSSIBLY BAD NEWS – ESAKI TISSUE

I have taken the extreme measure of disabling the purchase of Esaki Tissue on my web site.  Believe me, this is a problem for my business – I have sold literally thousands and thousands of sheets of Esaki.  Here’s the story:

Esaki has always been problematic to purchase for a variety of reasons.  Sometime in the last year, rumor has it (reported to me by a modeler in Japan) that the company experienced an online attack or hack of its website.  As a result, they took down the web site to protect themselves – and they closed their email accounts.

That makes it extremely difficult to order tissue for the US when you don’t speak Japanese.  Since I have made it through my busy time of the holidays and the vacation, I will now expend efforts to contact the company by other means to attempt to procure their tissue again.  In the mean time, rather than eliminating some colors from my store and inciting panic on the other colors, I have turned it all off for the time being.  Understand that I DO HAVE several hundred sheets of most colors, but some are down to less than 200.

Also, I have started to investigate Chinese sources.  Last fall, I ordered a sample from a paper manufacturer in China.  I received 13 gram-per-square-meter (comparable to Esaki) samples in a variety of wonderful colors.  This was equivalent to Esaki in appearance (a smooth polished side and a dull side) and grain (it has grain direction similar to Esaki), but did not have the wet strength that we have come to enjoy.  It wasn’t “bad” just not “good” – I believe it was better than most drug store tissue papers.  I can get all I want at a very reasonable price, but I want to exhaust all possibilities of continuing with Esaki before I order the Chinese tissue.

Here is a wing I covered with the Chinese tissue.  These are two of the sample colors I was sent with nothing added to them.  I covered one side of the wing (top and bottom) with dry tissue and the other side with misted/damp tissue.  It turned out pretty good.

I only mention the Chinese tissue to help keep the level of panic low – there ARE alternatives to Esaki.  In fact, if any of you have any information on lightweight tissue that has wet strength like Esaki, please let me know.

More to come…