January 29 - Hard to believe, but 22 tons of fine Mayco alloy landed here just two weeks ago and it's already gone. Our lead stock is down to less than 40 tons now and it's time to order another truckload.
February 1 - 80k bullets cast yesterday, casting and sizing until 8:45 when it was time to quit and watch "Justified." A nice end to a busy day!
February 4 - Ready to start a killer of a weekend with 70k bullets still needed for the CAC (Pennsylvania distributor) truck pickup on Monday. No rest for the elderly around here, I'm afraid!
February 5 - Well, the weekend is over. Another 14 hour day and 70k bullets cast, and many many sized - but there are still 21 pans of raw bullets left on the floor ready for sizing now.
February 10 - Bullet Master #8 is up and operational, running .45 SoftBall! beyond count. And Jo Ann implemented the reorganization of the machine layout in the shop such that all sizers and casters are grouped together into separate areas, giving us more room and efficient placement. And we finalized a deal on an elderly Bullet Master Mk. II from a gentleman in Indiana, who is in the process of palletizing it for shipment back to Magma Engineering for a complete rebuild/upgrade which will bring it to the current Mk. VIII configuration. So, in a month or so, we will have nine modern casting machines and Jo Ann will have to find us some more space.
February 11 - Another big production Saturday is on tap. Caster #2 still awaits repair (should have the repaired melting pot on Monday) and #3 blew its motor on Thursday. But we will be running on the other six machines and making steady progress towards obliterating the backlog.
February 18 - The repairs on the lead pot for caster #2 were completed by a machine shop in Lee's Summit so we picked it up and will be getting that machine back into service this morning. And the replacement DC motor for #3 arrived in Harrisonville, so we picked that one up last night and will also get that machine going. Hopefully, by noon today we'll be back to full strength and running on all eight Mark 7's and 8's by noon.
February 21 - Speaking with Magma Engineering yesterday, I learned that the Bullet Master Mk. II that I purchased from the gentleman in Indiana had arrived for refurbishment. They're going to strip it to the frame and wheel, sandblast and paint it, and then fit it with every new Mk. VIII component and ship it to us in about a month. I'm looking forward to getting Bullet Master Mk. II/Serial #68 integrated into our stable of bullet machines and expect it to make a whale of a lot of bullets for our great customer base!
March 1 - Tough, tough day and we're exhausted. However, we were crafty enough to retain enough energy that we're going to drive to LongShotz in Strasburg for their signature 18 ounce ribeye steaks with a HUMONGO baked potato. And best of all, at my request, LongShotz is now stocking Samuel Adams Latitude 48 ale, which is, in my opinion, the best ale in the world.
March 7 - A heads-up: We are on the verge of making a fundamental change in our business model and wanted to give you all some early information about it, as you have all been nice enough to have taken the time to come here to our company Facebook page and deserve to be the first to know. The problem is that business is good. Too good. We can't meet demand ... Yesterday, two trucks arrived for wholesale pickups and Jo Ann and myself had worked until 2:30 AM yesterday trying to complete the orders, while Mark worked all that night and then throughout the day yesterday before the trucks came.
And this is killing us. We're not spring chickens any more and can't keep this up.
And so we have tentatively decided that we are going to close the door to new retail (internet) trade and exclusively service only the wholesale customers and our existing customer base, which we be grandfathered in. We are going to kill the Blue Press advertisement ASAP and impliment an access code on the ordering portion of website, which will have been sent to our 14,000+ existing customers when we ready the move.
