MarkH
03-25-2007, 08:42 PM
From the you get what you pay for column.
My wife is a photographer and for the last couple years has been borrowing my pony clamps to secure her backdrops. She has always complained they are too hard to open. So last week when were in the big city and at a tool store, she discovered a bunch of black plastic clamps with orange trim. They were much easier to open so for under a buck each she got some. Made you know where.
I could not think of a reason where they would cause a problem. So I decided not to make any comments about her purchase, since she knew my quality tool speaches well.
Today she was setting up for a photo shoot and using her new clamps for about the 3rd time. As we were waiting for her customers to arrive we heard a big bang against the wall. We went to where she had set up and noticed one of her clamps was gone. We quickly found it scattered all over the floor with the metal spring stuck into the wall. Where it had gone into the wall is where she routinely sets up a chair and has a customer sitting. We cleaned up and covered the hole in the wall right before the customers arrived.
Needless to say she saw the liability of the situation well out weighed the cost and effort she had saved almost immediately. So the ponies went back up. The others to the garbage. After that we experimented and it looks like a couple of 2 1/2 inch C-clamps will do the best job for her and not require her to squeeze them to place them.
So yes, she was frustrated but happy that this had not happened in a way that cost her, her business. She looked at me and stated that my looking at tools for quality vs price was not a bad thing and she now understood the safety issues I had always preached about.
My wife is a photographer and for the last couple years has been borrowing my pony clamps to secure her backdrops. She has always complained they are too hard to open. So last week when were in the big city and at a tool store, she discovered a bunch of black plastic clamps with orange trim. They were much easier to open so for under a buck each she got some. Made you know where.
I could not think of a reason where they would cause a problem. So I decided not to make any comments about her purchase, since she knew my quality tool speaches well.
Today she was setting up for a photo shoot and using her new clamps for about the 3rd time. As we were waiting for her customers to arrive we heard a big bang against the wall. We went to where she had set up and noticed one of her clamps was gone. We quickly found it scattered all over the floor with the metal spring stuck into the wall. Where it had gone into the wall is where she routinely sets up a chair and has a customer sitting. We cleaned up and covered the hole in the wall right before the customers arrived.
Needless to say she saw the liability of the situation well out weighed the cost and effort she had saved almost immediately. So the ponies went back up. The others to the garbage. After that we experimented and it looks like a couple of 2 1/2 inch C-clamps will do the best job for her and not require her to squeeze them to place them.
So yes, she was frustrated but happy that this had not happened in a way that cost her, her business. She looked at me and stated that my looking at tools for quality vs price was not a bad thing and she now understood the safety issues I had always preached about.