It's a full time job just keeping everything running

I have managed to build most of the equipment in our shop. Some of it I built because there just isn’t any available to purchase and some I built because it was more cost effective to build it myself, or at least that's what I tell myself. My father and my grandfather are and were great at building equipment for their farming operations and other businesses. I grew up with the mentality that it was better to build it yourself if you could. And let’s be honest I enjoy building tools and equipment, and I enjoy using my own equipment in the shop. If I had it to do it over again I might have borrowed the cash to buy some of the bigger pieces and just paid a little interest while I made things I could actually sell. To date I have built an electric oven, a rolling mill, a 50 ton hydraulic press, a 50 lb pneumatic power hammer, a 2x72 belt sander, an air over hydraulic press, four gas forges, and I am finishing up a treadle hammer. I enjoy showing people all the tools I built in the shop, but it has not been a smooth process. There have been plenty of sleepless nights, lots of stress on my family and some actual tears. One of the problems with building “one offs” is not working out all those little bugs that seem to always creep up. That bolt that you just can't reach, the hose that has a little too much kink in it. Taking the time to redesign a majority of a project to fix those little quirks, just never seems cost effective when you're running your own business. My whole life I have watched my dad operate around those kinds of problems. Now that I am running my own business I get it a little more. Now that I have everything built I still have to keep everything running. One of the problems with forging, particularly with the power hammer, is that the equipment is trying to tear itself apart the second you start running it. Slamming heavy pieces of metal together 200 times a minute is going to take its toll on any equipment. And it puts a magnifying glass on any of those design quirks or weaknesses you overlooked in the initial build. I rarely make it through the day without having to work on some piece of equipment in the shop. Sometime last June or July I was writing my to-do list for the day at the shop and I had 7 pieces of equipment that were either broken or in need of considerable maintenance. Just for the record some of those were pieces I had purchased, not everything I built myself was broken. But it was pretty demoralizing, hard to feed your family when you can’t make any product in your shop. I was really starting to wonder if it was even possible for me to keep everything running in the shop long enough to make enough product to make a living. It took a week or two but I got almost everything back up and running. One of the pieces is still on the disabled list and another went to tool heaven. A while later I was driving by the local welding shop and the owner was out front talking to a mutual friend so I stopped in to say hello. The welder had inherited his business from his father who got it from his father. At one time it had been more a blacksmithing shop than a welding shop. When there was still a logging industry in your town he was a very busy man. Needless to say he is a wealth of information. I took the time to thank him for helping me several months earlier on a particularly difficult problem I encountered while building my power hammer. I was telling him about some of the equipment I had built and invited him out to see it sometime. I said “I can move a lot of metal when I actually have all my equipment up and running” He replied “yeah, It’s a full time job just keeping everything running sometimes.” I think I am going to stop by his shop once a week so he can remind me of that fact and remind me I am not alone in my struggles.