Forest Cobbler

That's encouraging. It's certainly worth giving it a go I think. Thanks

We had this offer sheet through yesterday, it has a new mobile number on it that's worth tryingdec 2019 part 2.pdf

Got a customer asking if we know where they can get a copy of this Banham key. I know we can get the blanks but we don't have the means to cut out the bottom edge, unless we could could do it on the Bianchi. Any suggestions please? Thanks, Valerie

I use Trend's Ezebadge program and a top feeding inkjet printer set to print on photo paper. Unfortunately I could never get Trend's precut sticker sheets to line up properly so I use A4 sheets of photo paper instead and stamp the centres out with a 25mm cutter. I used to use self adhesive photo paper but it gums the cutter up so I now use non adhesive paper and double sided discs.

And I can do as many or as few as I need.

I print my own. It's quick and easy.

I bet they still ask 'Do you cut keys?'

The sliding boards on our Flexam key bench are a bit like metal pegboards because you can move the hooks. We print our own dymo labels with JMA and Silca codes on and have recently started putting them onto thin magnetic squares making them even easier to re-arrange when necessary. If you recover your solid boards I wouldn't bother with the graphics, just invest in a decent label machine and print whichever company's codes that you use, then you can easily take off whatever has dropped out of use and replace it with something new.

Ron Hayes & Sons do a nice range of inexpensive wood and slate signs, and can supply you with display boards if you want them. shop@ronhayesandson.co.uk

Churning stuff out at £8.99 a pop will soon get the money back though.

To do them that cheaply they must be able to do them in about 10 minutes. Got to be using a system that us lesser mortals cannot hope to compete with.

Oh wow. £12 is far too cheap for the time involved. I quoted the customer £125 for this and they'd happily have paid a bit more. I probably spent a couple of hours on and off over the course of a week getting the settings right but, as I say, I was having to relearn everything so hopefully it wouldn't take so long in future. Then it took another hour and a half to engrave the 100mm diameter picture. So I think the price we quoted is reasonable for that.

It took a while, and several false starts, to remember exactly how to prepare the image for engraving and I did a few test runs on various bits of the picture while I made adjustments to the settings , but I did it. The engraving itself didn't take as long as I'd feared, maybe only an hour and a half rather than four. I'd forgotten that the 'picture engraving' process moves much more quickly than diamond drag. Do I want to promote it as a service? I'll have to think really hard about how long it took to do compared to how much the average customer is prepared to pay.

Hi Does anyone have a piece of chromed brass with a gloss finish 115mm by 45mm that you you could pop in the post? I've just made a mistake and need to replace the plate on a trophy and Mastergrave don't do gloss chromed brass any more. Thanks, Valerie

I was worried about the fashion aspect, and how each new phone release is a different size to the one before. So your friend's experience does not really surprise me.