Episode Transcript
[00:00:09] Speaker A: Hey, welcome to the DIY Garage, the podcast for hands on, do it yourself automotive enthusiasts. I'm Brian Joslin coming to you from inside the workshop studios of the Eastwood Company in Pottstown, Pennsylvania. With me today is Eastwood's own Mark Robideau. Now, we promised ourselves when we set out to do an Eastwood podcast that we weren't gonna make it a boring corporate show and tell. And we stand by that promise. But we're making an exception for Mark.
He's been at the center of so many Eastwood products and has long been the face of the company's R and D team in videos. It turns out people kind of like him. So here he is. Before we get talking with Mark, I just wanna remind you that you can catch the DIY Garage podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon, and other popular podcast services. You can catch video episodes on Eastwood's YouTube channel. Or just go to eastwood.com garage and click on the podcast tab for links to the podcast in either format. Whatever you choose, we hope you'll subscribe so you'll never miss a new release. So with that out of the way, Mark, welcome to the podcast.
[00:01:10] Speaker B: Well, thank you.
[00:01:10] Speaker A: Yeah, it's good to have you here. I missed you the last time you were in town. We were traveling and did not get a chance to sit down with you.
Before we get rolling here, there's two things that always come up whenever your name comes up when we're talking to people. First one is, man, he seems like he's got such a great shop, such a clean shop. And the second thing is, he seems like a really good guy to have a beer with.
So let's talk about the garage organization philosophy over some beer.
[00:01:40] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:01:40] Speaker A: Yeah. Bring it out.
[00:01:42] Speaker B: No way.
[00:01:44] Speaker A: There's one in there for you and one in there for me. I bet you can figure out which is which.
[00:01:48] Speaker B: This is the best.
Oh, got one of these. Is this one yours?
[00:01:52] Speaker A: Yeah.
And we'll try not to rattle the cans too much on the table here.
[00:01:57] Speaker B: Thank you.
[00:01:58] Speaker A: So we're gonna have a beer with Mark today.
What are you drinking?
[00:02:04] Speaker B: Coors light.
[00:02:05] Speaker A: Coors light.
[00:02:06] Speaker B: I'm a simple guy, and I'm on.
[00:02:09] Speaker A: A Narragansett east coast guy, and it feels good after lunch.
[00:02:14] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:02:16] Speaker A: So, seriously, let's talk about garage organization, because it's something that comes up all the time in your videos, is that guy's got the cleanest workshop I've ever seen.
[00:02:23] Speaker B: Yeah. And I hear that from other people that have been in it. I think it's something that, like, as a kid, I was always, keep your room clean. Keep your room. So I think that's where it started.
Where it really accelerated was I had my a and P license, aircraft maintenance. And where I worked in there first FBA was reading, Pennsylvania.
The director in there was all about cleanliness. Tools go back in the same place, floors are swept. So that's what. So then I end up. My first shop that I built, I remember here was one of the. We were looking to get into epoxy floor coatings, right? So at that time, trying to think who it was that was selling it. Biggest in the industry, in our market, and I was testing out theirs. And so I had garage floor with a bunch of different product spots all over it.
[00:03:20] Speaker A: Your personal garage at home.
[00:03:21] Speaker B: And it was time to put it into one solid color there. Once I did that, and then it just came. The organization tools. I wanted everything in cabinets. I didn't want shelves just because of any sanding dust.
[00:03:33] Speaker A: Right.
[00:03:34] Speaker B: A lot easier to keep stuff clean in there. That's where it went. I mean, my toolbox, that was. That's from aircraft. I can open up my wrench drawer, screwdriver drawer right there, and look if something's missing.
You better run back to that aircraft before anything fires up, because there's a wrench somewhere.
[00:03:49] Speaker A: So I think we've seen, over the years, we've seen, you know, inside your garage, but it was really, when you recently moved to Florida, like, in the last year, you started doing the Trans am videos out of your shop down there, and we kind of got to see your garage come together a little bit in that as it evolved. And what have you got? A basic 20 by 20 kind of suburban garage down there?
[00:04:07] Speaker B: Yep. It's a 24 by 36. So it's not a little bigger? It's not. A lot of our customers got much bigger than that.
But that one, yeah, that was like. That was like third or fourth iteration of doing so. That one, I knew what I wanted. I knew what worked in my other ones. I knew what I wanted to change in this one.
And that one's nice. I can almost blow the whole thing out again. Epoxy on the floor. I did aluminum soffit for the length of the ceiling, so I got good reflectivity in there. I could take a blow gun to that, blow it off its thing.
[00:04:43] Speaker A: So aluminum. Aluminum soffit, yeah.
[00:04:45] Speaker B: And one of the reasons it being down in Florida, I was reading too many horror stories of drywall in garages there.
I got Ac in it, but I don't run it all the time like in a home. So at nights. And get some humidity build up.
[00:05:00] Speaker A: And it's bright in there. I mean, we've noticed. Yeah. So walls are painted, floors painted white or gray. I mean, what's.
[00:05:07] Speaker B: Your floor is gray. White? I like white. For everything else, it's just hospital clean.
[00:05:11] Speaker A: Yeah. Talk about your storage situation. You talked a little bit about your aircraft tool chest. Like, what's your philosophy on tool storage and storage and all that?
[00:05:20] Speaker B: Like, when I set up my tool chests, I set them up, the drawers from top down.
Some of how you take something apart. So I got screwdrivers up front. Like, say you're disassembling a door in your door panel, go to your screwdrivers, and below that I got pliers, all type of cutting, squeezing, pinching down there.
Then wrenches, sockets as you get deeper. So it's easier for me when I'm doing a project running back and forth, I know exactly what drawers where. And again, what's missing, what's. What's lost in there, you know? So I, you know, all over the Internet is, oh, I'm missing my ten millimeter. I think I've ever. Well, one, I barely use one working on american cars, and two, I haven't lost. I mean, a half inch and a 916 is american cars. And I don't. Yeah, I'm not. I don't know what the Internet guys are doing that there's that many of them running around laws.
[00:06:13] Speaker A: Foreign cars eat them. Apparently, they drop down into places you can't get them. Yeah, I'm in that boat, by the way, with the ten millimeter club, so I lose 10 mm all the time. I think one of the coolest things I saw come out of your new garage was that tilt rig that you put the firebird body on. Did you come up with that on.
[00:06:29] Speaker B: Your own, or is that something. I can't take credit for that? I won't take credit for that. It was something that I saw online.
A gentleman built it, and I would give him credit if I could. I know he had a Camaro on it, and it was out of wood. If you search for that four by four post. Exactly. He had a great idea and real solid concept on it. All I did was I just did it out of, welded some four by four tubing together, and I did a little bit different radius when I went up. When I tilted on its side, I wanted to be a little over center just for safety. So I had it at 88 degree versus. He was building everything at true 90 degrees work for him. Yeah, it does.
[00:07:11] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:07:11] Speaker B: Yeah.
Whatever. He did work for him, and it worked out very, very well. I just made a little bit of change to it, and then that funny thing is that. So the car, then I. When it was on that when I was relocating down south, that got put on the moving truck right in that configuration.
And as they. As they're pulling it up onto the truck, they feel, well, this is too high. This won't fit. So there I am, furniture in the front of it. I'm with the plasma cover at the back. At the back of this truck on the street.
[00:07:43] Speaker A: Oh, man.
[00:07:44] Speaker B: Cutting about a foot and a half off of that thing.
[00:07:46] Speaker A: Yeah. So would it have fit otherwise? No.
[00:07:49] Speaker B: No.
[00:07:49] Speaker A: Okay. So it wasn't a wasted effort.
[00:07:51] Speaker B: No.
[00:07:53] Speaker A: What advice you have someone, for someone who's working in a small garage, 24 by 36 is pretty generous. But I imagine you've worked in much smaller garage.
[00:08:01] Speaker B: I've worked in much smaller than that. Much more than that. And that's where I. Organization. I mean, it's the one word. Yeah, that's it. And whether. Whether you want to, like when I've had littler ones, I also do, like, Homer model stuff and woodwork. And like many, many of our other customers, I kept all the woodworking stuff in the basement. I just separated mechanical from wood, and that really. That really helped the clutter for me. Yeah.
So that's. I mean, organization is the biggest thing.
[00:08:25] Speaker A: Yeah. Small garage. What do you do with parts? I mean, you've got that Firebird down the shell.
[00:08:30] Speaker B: I've always had sheds at my house. Yeah. Sheds now. Where I am now. Yeah. I've got a. I'm actually renting a damn storage unit.
[00:08:39] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:08:41] Speaker B: To keep the stuff in there, but, yeah, I try not to keep parts where I'm working except the ones that are needed for that task.
[00:08:49] Speaker A: And how long do you hold on to stuff when you know it's junk?
[00:08:52] Speaker B: Longer than I should. Like everyone.
[00:08:55] Speaker A: So you're guilty of it as well.
[00:08:56] Speaker B: Yeah. But as a lot of guys know around here at Eastwood, if I don't see a need to use something, six months, I get rid of it.
[00:09:07] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:09:07] Speaker B: And then I buy it again. Seven months.
[00:09:11] Speaker A: We talked a little bit about the Firebird. You've built some f body cars. Is that kind of your go to f body guy?
[00:09:19] Speaker B: Yeah, it is. As a growing up, had Mustangs, done that Nova's Chevelles, Corvette.
Just loved the Camaros. I just. I've had a couple of the first gen, second gen. I've always liked.
Yeah, I don't know, I just like them. It's, you know, it's funny because when you get to like our age you look back at that, you know when I was 16, 1718 it's, you know, what was, what did I, what did I want back then? You know what I had I don't want now, right. But what I wanted back then is what I have now.
[00:10:01] Speaker A: So what did you drive in high school?
[00:10:03] Speaker B: 78 Monte Carlo and then Sid Nova and then that was, that was it for in high school. And then after high school more came.
[00:10:15] Speaker A: Yeah. What was the first step? Body.
[00:10:17] Speaker B: You bought then a 68 hardtop Camaro.
[00:10:21] Speaker A: Camaro. And you had reg convertible I think.
[00:10:25] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:10:26] Speaker A: Still have that one?
[00:10:27] Speaker B: No, I got rid of that. I sold that before the move.
[00:10:29] Speaker A: And you're doing the Trans am now obviously.
[00:10:32] Speaker B: Yes. So this is the first time since I was 15 that I haven't been driving a muscle car, huh? Yeah, I sold the Camaro way too soon. I thought I'd be a lot closer on the Firebird than where I am.
[00:10:46] Speaker A: Yeah, well projects take time.
[00:10:47] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:10:48] Speaker A: Is there, is there an f body car you still want to build or any other car that you haven't gotten to that you still.
[00:10:53] Speaker B: I want to do a split bumper. I mean I'm sure everyone else does.
[00:10:56] Speaker A: Sure.
[00:10:56] Speaker B: And I'll even do a, I'll even do a clone. I worked with a buddy of mine years ago, he had a 75 and then we put a 70 split bumper, front, rear on. It turned out nice.
You're driving, it looks like until you look at the dash.
[00:11:12] Speaker A: Yeah.
We talked a little bit about your aircraft background. Let's talk about that a little bit and how that informed what you do here. I mean, what did you bring an aircraft technician into this world?
[00:11:28] Speaker B: The thought process.
The thought process when you're going through amp school.
[00:11:34] Speaker A: What's a and P?
[00:11:35] Speaker B: Explain amp airframe and power plant. Airframe and power plant. Yeah. The FAA terms like the license is, you know, an A and P license so you can get an airframe or power plant license or you get both. That I got so instilled is redundancy and just the act of repeated thought of did I do this? Did I do it right?
[00:12:03] Speaker A: Always double checking.
[00:12:04] Speaker B: Yeah. And that's something I bring into working on the cars. It's always double checking stuff. You know, I'll torque a bolt and then a lot of the OCD that I have. I'll go back and I'll click that torque wrench four times. That's just that's what I do. It could be a lug on my daughter's car. It could be an engine bolt, whatever. So you have a lot of that in there. I think the biggest thing is just the.
Just the. As you're working through something, the thoughtfulness of what I'm doing, I'm not just throwing a bolt in there, tightening it. I mean, for example, I'm doing some custom stuff, like, I bought a jeep, and I'm just putting side steps on them. Well, you put the bolts through the brackets there. Well, on an aircraft, the head of the bolt always goes directional flight if it's a horizontal, like wing bolts and stuff. That's how I install something. Now, it doesn't matter if it's a trail or hitch or what it is. There's always that thought process that's always behind it.
[00:13:01] Speaker A: Makes sense. And carries into the automotive stuff. Yeah, yeah. How long did you work as a.
[00:13:06] Speaker B: That's seven. Seven years.
[00:13:08] Speaker A: So when you were younger and.
[00:13:09] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I like that. We got. I worked at the Reading airport up here at that time, back in the early nineties, reading used to host one of the biggest air shows on the east coast, and our FBO would get the fuel contracts. So the one air show, it's.
I had a 10,000 gallon jet, a truck. I was in charge of fueling the blue angels on Thursday before the show, they would always go up and they would do a show for the press and for special needs kids. They would bring out hundreds of these kids, and they had to do. They were doing two shows, so they had to do a hot refueling between the two. And what that is, the aircraft come in, they line up, and they're just sitting there at ground idle. Then you roll up in the truck. Now, as a civilian, I couldn't touch the fuel hose, but I'd roll right up in front of them. There's an f 18 right there. I can ground the truck, but then the navy personnel would take the hose and do the refueling.
[00:14:08] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:14:09] Speaker B: But that was phenomenal there. I put fuel in one of the b 17s that was there. Russian aircraft hot refuel.
[00:14:16] Speaker A: The planes still running while they're. While they're doing that, or.
[00:14:19] Speaker B: No, not.
It's only blue angels that do.
[00:14:23] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. So aircraft world, everything is like ten times more severe, right? I mean, the penalties for failure are higher.
[00:14:33] Speaker B: We did the aircraft was called Blanca, and it was a wood fabric, low wing, very high performance, big six cylinder continental in these things. And I was rebuilding mags, the magnetos basically the distributor rebuilt the magneto on that and did a little fuel work, some general maintenance on it like that. The aircraft was up. The owner of the FBO and our chief flight instructor were up in the aircraft. Engine failure. They ended up putting it on, putting it down on the reading golf club or redding golf course.
Everything was great until coming up over a little berm, there's a golf cart to avoid that. And now you have, you have no, no more lift because they're on the ground. No engine divert to miss the golf cart, go into some trees.
Hurt bad. The one gentleman had rods in his back. Anyhow, they both lived.
FAA comes in tears, this thing apart.
I'm a 19 year old kid, like second year there.
[00:15:42] Speaker A: This is right out of high school. You were doing this.
[00:15:43] Speaker B: Well, I worked there summers from college. I would come home and I would work there and. Holy shit. That, and that goes through your stuff because you're responsible. Yeah. You sign off, you're responsible for that stuff. It was a fuel failure on the tank side being on the other side of the car. So it wasn't ignition.
[00:16:06] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:16:06] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:16:07] Speaker A: You sleep any better at night knowing that?
[00:16:09] Speaker B: Yeah. But I mean, two gentlemen I've known for years, you know, got hurt pretty bad.
[00:16:14] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. How does that come into some of the stuff you designed for Eastwood? That aircraft safety. Safety, safety.
[00:16:21] Speaker B: Redundancy. You know, that somebody's gonna be using. Somebody's gonna be using this. And the other thing as a parent with two kids, like the electro brake. All right. 24 inch electro brake. Great selling product.
A couple years ago, started working on the prototype, stuff like that. And I'm just thinking, well, you know, there's a lot of stuff that I do with my son working on, you know, I thought, what if I, my son's here, I'm teaching him how to bend sheet metal and something goes wrong with this thing and shocks him.
[00:16:48] Speaker A: Right.
[00:16:48] Speaker B: So that's what then. All right. So you start thinking, what's the redundancy that we have for the protection of shock on here? You know, that stuff just keeps in your head.
[00:16:58] Speaker A: Yeah. Kids change you a lot, actually. Yeah. What's one more aircraft question. We'll move on to other stuff. But what's the biggest difference between working on cars and working on airplanes?
As a Diyer like size, everything's just.
[00:17:11] Speaker B: Bigger when you go to walk around them. I think, I think, I think cars, I think are more fun for me because you don't have a. On aircraft, there's a standard on how to do something or a procedure that has to be followed to the ladder. You can. You can wander a little. Not a lot with the cars. You have the creative. You can do whatever you want, you know, unless.
Unless you're doing a true that concourse. Not the bolt restoration, but, yeah, that's what I like. A little more free creativity.
[00:17:44] Speaker A: Yeah. All right. I promised you no more airplane questions. I was always fascinated by that, and I think it's a great background to serve what you do professionally for us. On that note, let's talk about some of the products you've developed for Eastwood. And I think let's start with powder coating, because I think it's pretty safe to say that you, through Eastwood, created the DIY powder coat market. So tell us a little about how that got started, where you bring it to market.
[00:18:13] Speaker B: It's 96 when we started on it. And powder coating back then was all of your washer dryer, refrigerators, all that kind of stuff. But from the automotive side, not a lot other than Chrysler, they were the ones that were really experiencing at that time with epoxy powdered primer on the minivans.
[00:18:34] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:18:35] Speaker B: And then going from there. BMW was just getting in. They were playing with clear powder on wheels. They would actually use liquid color and then clear powder over that. So I just was intrigued about it, as were some other people at Eastwood at that time. And luckily, down the street, we had a local powder coater, and all he was doing was railings, the metal one, circular ones. He would do the railings, then there would be final bolt assembly and go off to the customer. So I went over there, and he says, yeah, if you want to sweep some of the shit off the floor, go ahead. So I did. I swept powder, literally, off his floor. Came home that night, put in my wife's salt shaker, brank, some Q panels home. I researched enough, talked with people. There's no Internet in 96 that I had access to, so it's not like you could learn anything, certainly not the.
[00:19:25] Speaker A: Way we have it now.
[00:19:26] Speaker B: Yeah. Sprinkled that on a cue panel. I cured it. I was like, holy shit, I could bend this cue panel. Was that. So then, do I have the home oven? Yeah.
[00:19:34] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:19:35] Speaker B: So then, well, this, you know, this can't continue with this salt shaker trial. So I made a. I was doing, at that time what we termed hot flocking, which is what is termed. I didn't have any electrostatic. I just knew I could. So I was using airbrushes, gravity paint guns, siphon paint guns, whatever we had around here. I was just machining different nozzles on there to spray the powder. Then I found out about fluidizing it. So I took a gravity binks gun, the old number sevens. And now that's what I played with. We could fluidize in that cup. All I did was machine a different piece that fit in the air cap that would actually spray the powder.
John Sloan was a gentleman here and we were playing with it. And he was in the jaguars near that iconic jaguar hood ornament, right?
[00:20:20] Speaker A: Yeah. Leaping cat.
[00:20:21] Speaker B: I don't know why he gave it to me, but he. Oh yeah, you could use that. So I took that thing, put it in the oven, heat it up for about a half hour, brought it out hot, flocked it in a gloss black, put it back into cure, came out. And I showed that to some of the people around the building later that day, like, holy shit. And the second thing then was it went to. I started reading about electrostatic charging, found out color tvs have high volt. Wheeled the tv and VCR from our conference room out into my R and D, hooked that up to a gun, crudely. And we did the first electrostatic DIY powder coating that we're aware of.
[00:21:00] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:21:01] Speaker B: Down in Malvern. Yeah. And then it just then I refined it and turned into what it is.
[00:21:06] Speaker A: Yeah. Talk about fluidizing. That's the particles moving around inside the container. You get this being pumped out?
[00:21:12] Speaker B: Yep. Yeah.
Instead of the powder flowing like a liquid paint, you have to fluidize it, turn it into a suspended particle in air and then move it out through the nozzle past your emitter. You have to have that emitter at the end, which is where you get that corona charging. Basically. Think of the end of that emitter, about the size of a golf ball.
You have that air ionized at about 15,000 to 25,000 volts. Every little particle comes out there, picks up a charge, goes it apart. Side note, I've tried correcting the Internet, but they don't listen to me.
There is no positive, negative like electrical flow.
[00:21:52] Speaker A: Got it.
[00:21:53] Speaker B: Electrical flow and electrostatic are two different things. Electrostatic. Think lightning.
Lightning can go from a cloud to a tree. We've all seen it happen.
Electrical flow needs a wire or some type of conductor.
So the electrostatic charging is a negative charge in powder coating. That little particle of powder picks up a negative coating through that corona cloud and then goes to a grounded object. That grounded object is at a different potential. Think of it as, say, zero being grounded. Now this thing's at 15,000, still negative. It still wants to find that ground. That's how it works.
[00:22:32] Speaker A: Yeah. And that's the magic of powder coating as we know it today. How did that grow from there? I mean, it started out with a single volt gun and then.
[00:22:40] Speaker B: Yeah, then it just. Once we started doing more and more parts, there was a couple of us in R and D and it was just. I mean, that was all I did. I mean, that consumed me. I would go home at night. I had prototypes at my home that I would play with, prototypes in the building at east. Would I go back the next morning with what I learned at night? And that happened for a couple months, six months, maybe.
More and more parts were done. More and more people got excited and then it just turned into what the gun is now are the same ones are 15 kv and 25 kv. They don't look much different than what the first one looked like back in 98. You know when people are like, ah, it looks like a little vector set just shit stuck together and glued and it does. But it's like, what I tell customers is you're not buying the applicator, you're buying that finished application, you want that carburetor based intake manifold, whatever it is, to look perfect.
What you're using doesn't have to, it's the end result. You know, you look at some of the best pinstripers in the industry, go look at their Mac brushes, there's teeth mark on the back of them, they're literally tape holding them to the barrels, let you look at what they do with them.
[00:23:54] Speaker A: So on the powder gun, the latest development, we've got something bigger coming, right? I mean, what's the latest development on that?
[00:24:01] Speaker B: So a couple years ago we launched our PCs 1000, which was our entry into the semi pro market, and we launched it. We had a good price point, but we may have brought it out to the market a little bit too early. We had some problems with it and one of the biggest ones was multicote. We had customers having problems doing three or more coats. We have a lot of customers that are still using it that are very, very happy with it. But that's one thing that we do here. We get direct feedback. I talk with customers on all of our products daily, you know, email, texts, I give out my cell phone pretty regularly to customers. And the feedback we listen, we always do and we always take that into the product. So for the last year or so, what we've been working on is a new revised a 2.0, we're calling it. Yeah, it's still a semi pro pro level gun. It's going to be at that same 800 799 ish 849. We don't know yet what it's going to come out to. We did a clean white sheet design on it, changed everything that was issues with the original gun, improved on it.
We got the only gun right now. We have body mounted high intensity led light, which is real nice. Checking the tight faraday areas. And that's something that going to be released.
We have prototypes in our manufacturing facility right now. Well, actually pre production units, manufacturing facility right now. Going to get them in here end of this month and then if everything's good on that, we'll enter production. We should have guns here by October, November.
[00:25:48] Speaker A: So I think that's one of the things people don't realize is we release a lot of products but the development doesn't end there. We do take that feedback and there is a continuous development process.
[00:25:58] Speaker B: A big one is our QST 3060.
That one. I was in my shop prior to this one and I was blasting and I had a 60 gallon upright sitting on the other side of where I was. Well, it was still a 24 wide garage, so I was 24ft from this thing and it was just resonating around off the garage door. And then I put our sound deadening, right. I cut different shaped acoustic pieces on that. This just sucks.
And I know a lot of our customers, you know, they'll build compressor sheds, right? Put them wherever they can. Outside.
It's like, no, I want some different. So now the Internet is the nice thing. So I started researching some things. Well, there's scroll compressors in ac units, right?
[00:26:57] Speaker A: Same design. Yep, yep.
[00:26:59] Speaker B: So I'm outside my AC unit and it's running like, this is exactly what I want. So bought one of them. Well, here, find out there's minimal CFM generated from those things. We'll work on pressure. So. But that, that turned or led me down this scroll, you know, screw compressors. We have the big Ingersoll rand out here in the garage, in the warehouse and that runs the whole building. Too much money. Too big, too much money. Wanted something. So started looking at that. We designed the first QST 3060.
Had some issues with that. I talked to every customer and Cody, every customer. On those first launches, we took care of every one of them issues. It was moisture that was building up in them that we didn't see in any of our testing. None of this redesign. Redesign, redesign. I think we're on our fourth redesign, writing how we're launching the unit this fall. And we finally captured the moisture issue problem and we have these. When I did the design with the team here of the solve, we also kept in mind, well, how can we make this a direct bolt on infield for everyone else behind that has a scroll and that's what we have retrofitable. So that one there, we're going to start working with customers. We send them this kit, eliminates this whole problem. So everyone that wants the future QST 3060, you're not going to have any issues with it. Everyone that owns it that's listening, call up Brian, he'll get a hold of me and I'll send you a kit.
[00:28:30] Speaker A: But I think that's a valid point about the continuous development is that every customer use case is a little different. And you can test all day long here in the studio, in the R and D lab, in your own conditions and even real world conditions, using it here in the building and stuff. But everyone's atmospheric conditions, daily use conditions, maintenance cycles and everything are different.
[00:28:52] Speaker B: So you're exactly right. Listen to this one. So we sold 30 units to a company called Iglass World, and they have these small shops, some are in strip mall, some are standalone. And what they do is this, like you go in there, you get your eyes measured or corrected, whatever they do, and like an hour later they cut lenses and you walk out seeing. So they bought our units, most of the chains down south area, well they're in non climate controlled area and these things are running 24/7 which is fine. Scrolls are designed to do that. Yeah, just so the filters that we have on it would saturate and then you'd end up with these moisture problems. That's where we really learned it on them. We designed this for the guys at home who are supposed to stop working at six, get something to eat and then come back out, work in the.
[00:29:39] Speaker A: Garage for 2 hours.
[00:29:40] Speaker B: You give all your equipment at least a little bit of break and then you always have that midnight to whenever you get home from work.
The 24/7 thing is something that we learned.
[00:29:50] Speaker A: Yeah, that 100% duty cycle all the time. You ever get frustrated when your designs get ripped off? I mean, you've got patents for stuff you've designed here and I know, you know, our SCT is a popular one to rip off.
[00:30:04] Speaker B: Yeah, I got eleven of them right now. And yeah, we've had like our SCT, well, harbor freight has knocked off the dual blaster that I did in 2009, the FCT, the powder coating gun. Oh, that's right, they did that. I think it was like zero one or zero two. They did that.
But we do Eastwood's R and D, and I don't know if they're listening. There's a bunch of companies who benefited from R and D. Yeah. Where it takes us a year, two years to do something. They see it, then they just knock it off. But what do they say? Imitation is flattery of stuff.
[00:30:41] Speaker A: Sincerest form of flattery.
[00:30:42] Speaker B: Yeah.
I don't know if that's true, because some of it hits hard when you. When you see yourself hours and hours.
[00:30:49] Speaker A: And hours into it and then. Yeah.
[00:30:51] Speaker B: Go down. Yeah. But that's what's gonna happen. I mean, that's.
[00:30:56] Speaker A: We've probably benefited likewise from other companies development on some level.
[00:31:00] Speaker B: Yeah, I'm sure we did.
[00:31:01] Speaker A: Maybe not a direct ripoff.
[00:31:03] Speaker B: Unknowingly.
You get an idea of something like a new tool or whatever it may be.
[00:31:10] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:31:11] Speaker B: You start running with it and prototype, and again, the benefit of the Internet, you go out, do some research, you're like, oh, shit, wait, there it is.
It's something subliminal. You may have seen it somewhere else years ago.
[00:31:22] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:31:23] Speaker B: Then your mind just unwinds and triggers it.
[00:31:27] Speaker A: Oh, I just lost the question.
[00:31:30] Speaker B: I am married.
Yeah.
[00:31:33] Speaker A: Sorry.
[00:31:33] Speaker B: I thought you were gonna go there after a couple drinks. I knew you were gonna head there.
[00:31:37] Speaker A: Yeah.
Oh.
On the subject of automotive paints, I know a big gap for me as someone who I tend to. I'm more of an originalist. I tend to put cars back to the way they were. Cause I wanted to enjoy them as if they were brand new, you know, when I was able to. Well, as if I was old enough to afford them when they were brand new.
We've gone into OEm paints now.
That's a. I think for a lot of people, that's a big market. And I also look at custom colors for cars that weren't, you know, I look to the OEM for custom color selection sometimes. I mean, when did that come out in discussions as an R and D product?
[00:32:19] Speaker B: Same thing as this.
Saying a little earlier this.
Eight, nine years ago, same thing. We've seen the cost of paint and the cost of painting a vehicle just going up higher than suspension components, drive line, everything. When you look at the chart, it was just going up this far. We follow all this, and that's where the group of us here decide, well, we got to do something else. We have to control this our own. And we've always. We've always been in chemical. We've always been in chemical. First one, you know, we had. We had our Corliss, which some customers may remember that, you know, in early nineties. And that was the first rust encapsulator. Yeah, we were purchasing that from a company in England.
So we've always been in the coatings, and then we really. We really pioneered the detail colors. Aluminum blast, spray gray really got into those.
We were. We were giving the customers Seymour of sycamore, Seymour paints. They were the ones who invented the aerosol can years ago, and we really got into, well, let's package in pint quart. Maybe somebody wants to spray. Maybe they don't like that aerosol, that rattle can restoration. So we really started packaging paint that way. But lately, like I said a few years ago, was, we need to control the cost, otherwise, we're not gonna have a hobby left. Not everyone wants a rat rod, right. You know, and not everyone likes patina. Some do, some don't, but you have to. We know people paint cars, so we had to cater that. So that's where we started working. We work with some of the best chemists in the country, help us formulate our. Formulate our paints. Yeah, we now have the OEM select project, where basically any color that was produced oe, we can replicate.
[00:34:09] Speaker A: So just like your neighborhood paint shop, except you can buy it online and.
[00:34:14] Speaker B: And, you know, the consistency and the quality is going to be there from us. So if something happens, you paint the car and something happens two years from now, shopping cart smacks it or whatever.
[00:34:22] Speaker A: Yeah. I think having painted a car at home myself, I don't know, 1215 years ago, I had to go down to the local paint supply shop, the auto body supply shop, and they were used to dealing primarily with professionals coming with a paint code and know exactly what chemistry they wanted. This and that. And, you know, they're pummeling me with, you want base clear, you go on single stage. You want urethane, you want acrylic, you know, like, all these things that I didn't know, and I just wanted a red car that matched, you know, the BMW red that I was. Had in my garage at home. And I think. I think for a lot of people, that's the intimidating part of the process, as much as painting the car is. Is talking that language. And I think that's where.
And on the marketing side, we're always working to make that process easier for someone to make that decision.
[00:35:06] Speaker B: Yeah, you hit a good point. Yeah. It is intimidating for somebody to walk into that store, especially if there's other guys in there doing stuff and they know what they want. And they got a sleeve of tape over here and shit like it. So, yeah, it does make it, you know, the site, we're trying to always make that better. Every day, every moment, trying to do. But what we're trying to do on there is have that experience. I don't want to say, like, the easiest it can be to get to what you want. You know, what color you want in there. Like you said, I want that oe color, that original. So that's where we're at with this. With this line here, is to make it easy to shop. We have everything else that's needed, from PPE equipment to masking to everything else. Spray guns, all the equipment that's needed to do the job. The last key piece was the actual liquid itself.
[00:35:53] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. I think talking the language is one of the toughest things about being a diyer, whether it's tools or finishes or whatever. It's just knowing that terminology. Like, I just want it to look like this when it's done. What do I have to do to get there?
And I guess that's where we come in on the education side, too, is taking down some of those barriers.
[00:36:14] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:36:15] Speaker A: And letting people just do their project.
[00:36:16] Speaker B: And I've, you know, talking to customers over the years, you know, that's why I love going to Carlisle, because you're face to face with. With everyone and I, you know, it's just buy the gun, buy the gun. We got 90 day, no question asked policy.
Take some of the epoxy primer. Don't even worry about your color. Just take a door, declar with it, paint it. Just get that over with. You know, there's so much. There's so much pent up intimidation of painting a car at home, especially if it's your first one, that no one takes that step.
That's just take the step. And then once they do, they're like, oh, all right. They call back, well, here's what happened. Here's. Okay, well, it's a lot easier to work through the problems as they're occurring rather than sit there on your chair and speculate what's going to go wrong and then never pull the trigger.
[00:37:04] Speaker A: Yeah, I found that to be completely true. Just taking that first step is usually the biggest hurdle. Just saying, committing to doing it. And I say that looking, you know, what's behind me here. Like, I dove in deep on this project. Yeah. This Range Rover project, Sunny, that we're doing. I've done other light restorations. I mean, way deeper than I've ever been. But, you know, in sequence, it's just one step at a time, but you have to start somewhere.
[00:37:26] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:37:27] Speaker A: And whether it's buying the gun or figuring out what character you want or whatever, for a paint job.
[00:37:32] Speaker B: Yeah.
It's the same with welding. And we never really. We dabbled with welders. Some of the. Some of the listeners that know us from the beginning know that we really pioneered the spot welder and stitch welder.
[00:37:50] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:37:51] Speaker B: That was used.
[00:37:52] Speaker A: We found a relic welder. There's one here in the studio.
[00:37:55] Speaker B: We used to sell an old 60 or 70 amp stick welder. I forget what it was, and. But you could use these attachment with it and they worked okay. Yeah, but it was the first gun out there that would do a one sided spot weld. Duplicate that. And if it was because it has a carbon electrode and those are a little bit finicky if you've used them. So if you did it right, if you had the two pieces clamped dead tight, you could produce a structural and very oe looking Spotwell. But anyhow, that was our dabble into welders. And then fast forward to 2008.
I said to the owner then, it's like, I think we could do a line.
I think we could. You know, we start out with a mega tig and a plasma. So we started working on it, came out the 135, the 175 MiG, and a plasma 40 amp, and it took off.
My first year forecast was a big.
[00:38:53] Speaker A: Gap in the market at the time.
It was expensive.
[00:38:56] Speaker B: It was affordable. Yeah. So you had a 299 MiG 135 that we had customers still to this day, they'll put it up against the biggest, the best out there, Lincoln and Miller. So we did that. My year forecast was based on these stud welds that we sold back in the late eighties, nineties and month and a half or, sorry, two and a half months, we went through that forecast, and then we brought on the first. And again, that's been knocked off, too. We brought on the first AC DC Tig that was easy to use. And now that tig 200, we still sell a version of that today. It's been. Again, it's been upgraded and made better and better. But that original one out there got a lot of people in this hobby comfortable to Tig Weld.
[00:39:43] Speaker A: And I think, if we're being honest, I think a lot of people know Eastwood as an affordable welder company as much as a finished tool company.
[00:39:50] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:39:51] Speaker A: It's really become part of who we are. And, yeah, I'm looking at the lineup. We have in the garage there. And just. There's a lot of welder depth right now. We've got something for everybody.
[00:40:02] Speaker B: Yeah. And something that goes with that was I wanted to do a corvair, right?
We were at a. Again, 1617. I forget what I was. There was a corvair that used to run around. We used to come down here and you could race on High street.
And then we'd run back to renning at the end of the night, and there was a corvair that ran there. And I was like, that. That's sort of ugly, but Camaro esque because the way it was designed. So anyhow, fast forward to modern times here. We're out there. We'd go to a local junkyard, and we're just hunting on. We just wanted doors for a prop here. And this thing's sitting in the weeds over there. So I asked the guy, and he says, $400. I said, you have a title? He says, it's $400. Then I'll take it. So we dragged it or. No, that's right, for that price. Even brought it back here on a rollback. Dumps it off the seized motor. Nothing was good on it, but I thought, all right, we'll use this as a project, or we'll build this thing. Well, it came time to strip the paint. I wanted to see what was on it again. Options for the diY.
You can disassemble everything to a body. You can send it out to be media or acid dipped.
You can blast it at home, or you can sit there with a da. Liquid paint stripper. Do whatever you want to do in your driveway. I said, well, I've done the liquid strippers.
I've done da. I've done, you know, that side of it. I've blasted.
I want something that's a little easier. So thought, what about rotary sanding? So I worked for Makita for a couple years.
You know, some of the development of the belt sanders in there with what they were working on, stuff that really never came to market. But I thought, you know what? We end up with the SCT. And the SCT has sold very, very well for us. Most importantly, it's benefited a lot of people in this hobby, being able to remove paint, rust coatings, but then also burnishing, polishing. So you can do a lot with that tool. And that was a fun project there, working on that, developing that with the team here.
[00:42:12] Speaker A: Yeah, it's been a very popular one, too.
[00:42:14] Speaker B: And it's. It's bulletproof. You can throw that thing. Throw that thing around all you want. And harbor freight knocked that one off. That was pretty cool. Yeah, they did that not too many years ago.
[00:42:24] Speaker A: Yeah. Talk about the process for other Eastwood development stuff, like, where do you start with finding a gap in the market?
[00:42:33] Speaker B: Yeah, that's a great question.
I think what's really driven a lot of the Eastwood exclusive products, the products that a lot of the customers come to us for was developed out of need, and that's why I always got to be restoring a car. Same with you. Once we're restoring a car, you run into the same problems that our customers do.
A lot of mindset people have is, okay, I ran into a problem.
How do I get over around it? That's the human thought process.
I step backwards from it and, well, what caused this problem? And you find a solution to that.
[00:43:11] Speaker A: Get to the root.
[00:43:12] Speaker B: That ends up being a different type of tool, a product. Some of the stuff is let this take an existing product and just put some tweaks on it, make it a little bit better, easier, more accurate, whatever the need may be.
[00:43:26] Speaker A: What's another beyond powder coating and some of the things we're known for, what are some of the other gaps in the market that, you know, as cars evolve, you know, I mean, more plastic, more computers, more electronics, where's the future of, you know, restoration and diy maintenance?
[00:43:43] Speaker B: I think the future, that's a great question because this is where we're at right now.
[00:43:47] Speaker A: Right.
[00:43:48] Speaker B: You know, the future. Driving a vehicle in the United States is a privilege. It's not a right at any time.
SEMA is fighting hundreds of bills every year to keep us or to allow us to enjoy this hobby at any time. We could get the wrong person in government. And all they'll say is, okay, every vehicle to drive on public roads has to meet 2025 emissions.
And I know Holley, Edelbrock, Phytech, all the big boys know this, too. And what can we do to make these things meet a mission that's something that could really cut our hobby off. But your question was, what does a hobby really need now in the future? And I think there's two things that are. That are hurting all of us. Restoring cost of paint and interior.
There's probably two or three big interior companies in our. In our space creating the materials that.
[00:44:47] Speaker A: Are the upholstery, fabrics and things.
[00:44:49] Speaker B: Yeah. That are doing everything they can to try and keep their costs down, but their costs are just driving up price of oil and everything else.
Paints, the big drive line. You can control that you know, that we can do. You can build a motor yourself. You don't have to buy a crate motor, but upholstery and paint. There has to be a way for us to be able to apply a coating. And I'm not saying paint a liquid coating on it has to be a way to apply a coating to a vehicle at home. I don't think wraps are at. I tried playing with wraps back in the nineties. I called it thin film painting before it got big. I found out that the wraps.
I'll think of the name. They were used on signs like the big McDonald's m was this wrap, and then every couple years, you could replace it before they turned into acrylic and all the backlighting that turned into. And I was able to do a door. I took a door at that time. I had a 75 vetted, and the door, I just da'd it, did some fill on some low spots and chips like that, and put a wrap on it. It was red. And me and John Snow. That doesn't look too bad. Then I went to do the iconic quarter sail panel that wraps back into the window.
Well, now you have Avery. That's the company I was working with. Now you have three m and all the big boys out in wraps that have stuff. So I thought that was gonna be the solve. It's not.
[00:46:13] Speaker A: And the wrap's only as good as what's underneath it.
[00:46:15] Speaker B: Yeah, that's exactly it. And the thing with the wrap is, what do you do on the jams? That's, you know, when I go to car shows and stuff like that looks nice. And then the door is opened up, and, oh, it's green and thread on the wall.
[00:46:27] Speaker A: I don't overcome that with paint either. A lot of people skip the door jams on paint. Paint jobs too.
[00:46:32] Speaker B: Yeah. But I think there has to be a way to put, like, I'd love to be able to powder coat entire vehicle. I've done a hood is the largest object I've done. I've done a Ford nine inch rear wheel drive shaft, and I did a power glide transmission with fluid still in it to this day that's still coated red.
[00:46:47] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:46:49] Speaker B: I'd like to do a vehicle which would be different type of lighting. We have the equipment. Our guns will spray a vehicle, no problem. But then there has to be something else. There has to be another type of process. And, you know, painting now is no different than cavemen smashing berries into liquid and drawing animals on a cave wall. You know, paints are still that same. Type of process with a lot more.
[00:47:14] Speaker A: Chemistry, pigment on a surface, powder coating an entire car. It sounds like the challenge is getting that much heat in a big enough space to do that. Right?
[00:47:24] Speaker B: That's exactly, yeah, we're using lamps.
We're experimenting now with uv powders.
[00:47:30] Speaker A: Yeah. So a uv cure instead of a heat cure.
[00:47:35] Speaker B: Well, it's still. Yeah, you'd still use some ir as what's called a kicker, just to get the flow happening. But that's only for a few seconds and then you go ahead and do the uv.
[00:47:43] Speaker A: Interesting.
[00:47:44] Speaker B: Yeah, the uv. The drawback right now is its line of sight. So imagine the door's off and you're doing an a pillar where you have a lot of stuff happening in there. That's where you have a little challenge.
[00:47:55] Speaker A: What's the hardest part of designing or adapting professional equipment for a DIY market, which is a lot of what we do, we take things out of industry and bring them down to cost and usability standpoint for general consumer. What's the biggest challenge in that?
[00:48:10] Speaker B: I think the biggest. I think the biggest is when you're talking about professional equipment and bringing it down, is that over years, started as something basic and got built upon into what it is now. And it got built upon that way because of maybe safety features needed to be met, performance functions needed to be added to get to that. We have to sort of reverse that down. And it's not just simply reverse engineering back to its components, it's what's the customer need out of that? Do they need this feature? Do they need that feature? Then you slowly pick stuff, apartheid, until you get down to the core of what's really useful. Then we build back in a little bit more. Whether it's safety or ease of use.
[00:48:58] Speaker A: Do you think there's any part of the manufacturing process for a car that is not scalable to a DIY operation? Something that can't be done in a home garage on some level we've got people painting in their garages at home.
[00:49:15] Speaker B: Yeah, I don't think so.
With, especially our customers, they'll do anything.
Yeah, I mean, you only have so much wallet. Spend everyone, you buy the car and then you put a budget onto it. We all know it's not realistic, but you have to try and you have to try and like I talked to customers, you gotta at least have that wired dog frame cage around you. It doesn't have to be solid walls. Yeah, you spend a little bit more on this or that, but you have to have something to contain your budget.
And that's where now you can do anything you want, because that labor cost to send something out is what you have no control over.
[00:49:57] Speaker A: Are you excited all by some of the file sharing and distributed manufacturing, like companies that will print your file for you? I mean, that's like a whole new world. I think DIY is you can control your creating your file if you have something you just need to replicate or want to create something unique, and now you can send it to.
[00:50:16] Speaker B: Yeah, I think that's a huge new world.
And I think it's something in our industry. The 3d printing, the send, cut, send type companies that are out there. Yeah. I mean, it opens a lot of doors to customization, something that you may not have been able to do before.
[00:50:32] Speaker A: Yeah. In your research, are you finding gaps in customers abilities these days? I mean, I think some of us have talked about the gap in, like, technical training. Is it a steep hurdle for a lot of people to get into doing this?
[00:50:48] Speaker B: Well, I think if you don't have enough, if you don't have enough younger generation learning from the older, then, yeah, it's gonna get pulled apart a lot quicker.
I brought something to the company years ago, alternative to experience.
The concept with that is, can we design tools that will form metal, but without having 40 years of metal forming experience?
And that's something that I still think we can do, but without something like that. Yeah. I mean, if, you know, if Gene Winfield stops telling young kids how to use the hammer dolly, then generation's gonna continue to slip.
[00:51:35] Speaker A: Yeah, we've got guys like Matt Murray.
[00:51:37] Speaker B: And you just gotta get. As long as the young kids have an interest in the hobby. Like, I have a, my son's 24. He give a shit about the Firebird Camaro or any of them? I mean, he liked riding in them.
[00:51:48] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:51:48] Speaker B: But. And I tried to get him to help stuff, and if it was a five minute project, he was all over it. But if it was all afternoon and you really don't get a result, all you did was tore apart a front end and you got some of the stuff blasted. Well, there's no, there's no reward for him.
[00:52:08] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:52:08] Speaker B: You know, there was a reward for me because I knew. I'm a step closer. I knew what the end result was going to be in my head. He doesn't see that, you know, so as long as the kids get involved, so does he.
[00:52:18] Speaker A: Your son, for instance, have an interest in the cars and not the process or just not interested?
[00:52:23] Speaker B: He likes the cars. Yeah.
[00:52:23] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:52:24] Speaker B: Yeah, he'll go to car shows and stuff like that. It's just not the. And maybe he'll develop it later.
[00:52:30] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:52:31] Speaker B: Right now, it's just not the interest.
[00:52:34] Speaker A: Is there still, like a dream build you have in mind? I mean, we're similar in age. Mid fifties. Yeah, give or take. What does it say?
[00:52:43] Speaker B: Yeah.
I had a ride in a.
I think I was 20. My buddy's sister, she had a 308 Ferrari.
I think it was mid eighties.
And we. She took me out one night, and there was this same stoplight there up in. Outside reading. And from the light to light, we got to 100. And we braked for the red light at the other end there.
[00:53:10] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:53:11] Speaker B: And that engine behind me, that. That I was in love with that.
[00:53:14] Speaker A: Little high strung v eight.
[00:53:15] Speaker B: Yeah. And never had money or, you know, up until last couple years, started getting an itch. And that's a saying how you get. You get to a point where I, you know, I want what I wanted back then that I couldn't have or couldn't afford or whatever the reasons were that I'd like to build.
[00:53:32] Speaker A: Yeah.
Is there any part of the restoration process you've never learned to do yourself? You mentioned upholstery. I don't know if it's something you've ever done.
[00:53:40] Speaker B: I never rebuild an automatic transmission.
[00:53:42] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:53:43] Speaker B: Yeah. And I want to try that.
[00:53:45] Speaker A: That's surprising, actually, for some of the former aircraft. Not that it's directly relative, but just intensity of mechanical.
[00:53:52] Speaker B: And I think, because I think with me, it wasn't for the lack of learning, because if I want something done, I'd rather spend too much time and too much money learning how to do it myself than I could have hired somebody to do. That's just. I always just want to learn it. But I think growing up, I was always playing with the Chevy muscle car. I mean, a turbo 350 was $250 running when I was a kid.
[00:54:21] Speaker A: Just replace it, rebuild them.
[00:54:23] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:54:24] Speaker A: Is there any process that intimidates you? I know a lot of people are freaked out by electrical, like doing heavy electrical work or.
[00:54:31] Speaker B: No, I mean, from all the training we had on the aircraft side, pneumatic, hydraulic, electrical, any of that stuff. Nothing's really. Now, like I said, it's just automatic transmission. That's what I want to do yet.
[00:54:43] Speaker A: Yeah.
Well, this has been a great talk. I hope you've enjoyed the beer.
[00:54:48] Speaker B: Yeah, I had fun. I hope we have more.
[00:54:51] Speaker A: We got approval for one beer, but there's a trunk full in my car if you want the rest.
So. Cheers.
[00:54:57] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:54:57] Speaker A: Thanks for coming on. I'm glad you're around for the summer classic this weekend and can't wait to have you back in, so. Thanks. All right.
[00:55:03] Speaker B: Thanks, Brian.
