Hi Guys,
Hopefully we will hear more from Chad S soon - I am very interested to hear his further ideas on our Cutting Wheels!
With regard to the testing and comments so far - firstly I would like to thanks the 3 recipients who have given Smith & ARROW and the Journal some of their valuable time.
Some have commented here that they admire the forthright approach that Smith & ARROW have shown by offering their products up to open testing in a non controlled environment. Those who have taken on the challenge to do the testing and report back have also shown the fortitude to stick their necks out to provide us all with their open and honest opinion.
When assessing the outcomes of what we have done here, it must be noted that this is NOT a "formal" testing environment. Formal accredited testing would require the strictest controls - a completely independent, unbiased, scientific process whereby all variables would be kept at a constant, except the products being tested – the same machines, exactly the same weight / pressure on the machines, exactly the same materials, etc. etc.
In fact, what we have proposed and what has been undertaken is the random choice of 3 members of the Forum, all who had previously openly posted their preferred brand of abrasives, and none of whom have any relationship to Smith & ARROW. They may be absolute professionals with years of training and experience in cutting metal, or simply hobbyists with a keen interest.
Notwithstanding all this guff, I must admit I am very happy with the results.
Jim Vannoy seemed pretty impressed with the speed with which the wheels cut and that they seemed to last well. He had some issues with the freighting time – understandable. It probably had more to do with me doing it all myself than anything else – instead of leaving it up to my Staff that manage dispatches every day. We do a reasonable amount of business of Ebay http://stores.ebay.com/smith-and-arrow and a lot of the positive feedback in the USA also mentions fast delivery. But this is something that we will continue to look into. As the business owner, it is unacceptable to me for a customer to have to wait more than a maximum of 4 working days for delivery after an order has been placed.
Regarding cutting aluminum – some of our biggest corporate clients are aluminum fabricators who buy the thin INOX Cutting Wheels and the Zirconia Flap Discs. However, they ALL use wax on the wheels for the best result.
The time and effort that Nissan Crawler put into the testing and report deserves a special thankyou – very impressive! From all that detail, it appears that the Smith & ARROW wheels cut much faster in those tests (20 – 40%) and with the same level of wear, as the products they were tested against. The benefits of a fast cut are many; including saving time, and less burning / marking and therefore cleanup work required.
The price difference is also worth noting with the other tested product being more than 65% more expensive ($0.84 Verses $1.40).
Regarding the question on shipping to Canada, we DO ship to Canada and although it costs more in freight, our customers are still very happy with the overall cost per disc for the quality they get.
Once again a big thankyou to you guys for helping out with the testing – if any of you guys feel like sending some of the sample Cutting Discs off to other members for their feedback to the forum I would really appreciate it. Its been an interesting exercise and I look forward to any other ideas or suggestions you may have!
Cheers
Ben Ferguson
Managing Director
Smith & ARROW (US) LLC
www.smithandarrow.com
