[TheForge] Re: Iron Foil

[Mike Spencer]

Ries Niemi <rniemi at fidalgo.net> quoth:

> When shopping for something, using the proper definitions and words
> are important.

I couldn't agree more.  But there is a potential gotcha:  Sometimes the
salesdroid doesn't know what any of those terms mean.  He's used to
dealing with customers who don't know either.  So he habitually throws
around the terminology he finds in his catalogs and company PR
brochures just to impress people.  He will believe you're doing the
same.  You and he may then have a conversation that you think means
something but which he regards merely as a certain kind of male
bonding exercise.  If you fail to detect this situation on the fly,
the results, as they say, are not predictable.

[Numerous yarns of salesdroid stupidity suppressed.]

Even with a complete absence of both stupidity and malice, you have to
do more homework than they do.  F'rgzample, there are numerous gauge
standards.  Which is in use by a vendor for a given material isn't
always obvious so *you* have to know before hand that his notion of,
say, 14 ga. may differ from yours.  Product sold as 1/8" x 2" hot
rolled may actually be 1/8" plate sheared to 2" with different
standards of flatness and dimension than stuff that's rolled to 1/8" x
2".  And so on.


- Mike

-- 
Michael Spencer                  Nova Scotia, Canada       .~. 
                                                           /V\ 
mspencer at tallships.ca                                     /( )\
http://home.tallships.ca/mspencer/                        ^^-^^

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