So about the supplier and component problem I wanted to talk about last week…
But first, Happy Thanksgiving! We all have many things to be grateful for and you are on my list. It’s because of you that I write these notes, and that the company even exists in the first place. So thank you for being part of this community and for your encouragement. Now back to the good stuff.
So as many of you know, the Murdy No. 2 journal is a product we feature quite heavily. That is, in no small part, due to it being the design I am most proud of. Sure our patent pending tab locking leather seams are both awesome and unique, but part of my reason for starting the company was to make a journal I would want to use.
Something at the core of the product (literally) is the spine bar. This was one of those little things that makes it better than the other slip on journal covers. They put pressure on the part of the book where the cover connects to the page block. This area is always more fragile due to the way that the book pulls at that seam when it is open. I’ve had several of my journals rip in that spot in the past due to the slip cover pulling there.
Thus our bar binding technique is an amazingly simple and elegant solution to that problem. It holds the book in place using a properly durable mounting location in the spine. It keeps the book held in tight so it can’t slip out, while still allowing for the book to be removed and replaced with minimal effort. Lastly, the design allows for our stitchless and glueless policy to remain intact so we know the covers will last the test of time.
But the spine bar is an absolute pain in my butt…
When I first came up with them we contracted with a small local machine shop to have them made. It was a single guy, who made them all on a Bridgeport (think an intelligent drill press) one at a time. He struggled to keep up with our demand and we couldn’t get them fast enough.
We eventually switched to a new larger machine shop in the area. They built a custom jig to hold multiple bars in place while a CNC machine did all the cutting, drilling, tapping, etc. This allowed for a significant speed increase, and seemed like a good solution.
We would place large purchase orders with them, where they would make the stock, and then we would order from them part of those PO’s every month or so. This way we would be able to get parts quickly in shop without having to pay enormous amounts to buy the inventory up front.
It was my brother who first spotted the rust issue. Our original bars were made of 1018 steel. Very durable, and easy to machine, this metal is excellent. A light machine oil was added to them to ensure they didn’t rust, and I had believed that due to their encased nature, they would resist rust naturally. I was wrong. Now, the rust shouldn’t really cause any harm, but it’s still annoying and I don’t like it.
We decided to get the bars plated in zinc. This allows for the easy machining of 1018 steel, but with the rust and corrosion resistance of zinc. This added step needed to be done by a third party plater after the machining had been done. Both last year and this year we had placed large purchase orders months in advance to allow the shop to make the bars, and get them to the platers and back in time. Both times we have had the bars be very delayed in delivery. So much so that we had had critical shortages of those parts where we have run out and had to wait days or weeks to get them back in stock.
So after an enormous amount of discussion with Meryle and Anna about what it would take, we are going to start making them in house.
To avoid the delays with the platers we are switching to 304 stainless steel and will be cutting, drilling, tapping, grinding, etc all under our roof. This will undoubtedly require far more work and problems than I anticipate at this point (as all of my projects do), but I’d rather have those problems under my roof where its our team’s creativity that solves it. That control allows for other advantages as well.
When we asked our current machinists to make them out of 304 stainless steel they came back with a quote 3 times what we currently pay for per bar which would have required a serious price jump for our journals which I wasn’t willing to do. By bringing this under our roof, we should be able to make material improvement while still keeping the price the same to our customers.
All in all, I’m excited for this new step and what it opens to us in the future.
We had some similar story with our leather cutting but that is a story for another time…
Anyway, I wish you all the best this Thanksgiving and want to remind you that we have the Black Friday Cyber Monday Bogo sale going on so go get all your Christmas shopping done ahead of time.
Also if you missed our announcement on Tuesday, we just launched our 5 year journal that uses a 400 page expanded lined Moleskine insert. Check it out here on our website:
