A rant about...... shims

[em2nought]

Went to Thailand in December, and guess what - stuff was made in Thailand. They are just a little ways from China and they make their own stuff. Somebody has committed treason against the US, several somebodies. It should be viewed as treason.

[ReallyDedPoet]

Originally Posted by Ducimus

I didn't think the word "Honda" and "cheap" could ever legitimately be used in the same sentence.

But in this case I think you pay for what you get. Honda's, Toyota's are consistently ranked higher as far as reliability, re-sale, etc, etc. Many North American cars are not.

As far as the Ford Ranger, I had thought about one of these but to be honest I think I would go for the F-150, a lot more truck and the gas mileage is not much different.

[krashkart]

It's pretty sad when, as Jan Kyster pointed out, American-made shims are ranked 42nd in quality out of 43 other nations. Our cars suck, and apparently, so do the simplest of our wooden products. *facepalm*

[August]

Originally Posted by Rilder

Just think if we have china use their trees for our stuff they will eventually use up all the trees in china. Trees are the leading producers of oxygen I believe. THUS CHINA WILL RUN OUT OF OXYGEN.

But this will blow your mind. The wood for those shims and the rest of that stuff probably came from the US. They buy our raw lumber, build crap with it then sell it back to us.

[Growler]

Originally Posted by August

But this will blow your mind. The wood for those shims and the rest of that stuff probably came from the US. They buy our raw lumber, build crap with it then sell it back to us.

After it's been cut by American companies, shipped on American rails and rivers to the coast, loaded on ships by workers in American yards, transshipped across the Pacific (on ships likely not American flagged, owned, or crewed), offloaded in Chinese yards by Chinese workers... on down to the lumber yards where all different types of lumber products are created, then shims, then the sawdust gets sent off to the particle board makers... then the products are packaged, transported back to the coast, freighted back across the Pacific into Diego, Long Beach, and other West Coast US and Canadian yards, etc. etc. etc. until it ends up in the Orange or Blue boxes for purchase.

I mean, if that's not efficient, I don't know what is. /sarcasm.

[Ducimus]

Originally Posted by krashkart

It's pretty sad when, as Jan Kyster pointed out, American-made shims are ranked 42nd in quality out of 43 other nations. Our cars suck, and apparently, so do the simplest of our wooden products. *facepalm*

I think he was making that part up, just to get my goat. I very much doubt anyone would take the time to rank something that can be made out of scrap lumber.

edit:
Speaking of which. It also just occured to me i must have hit a lowpoint in my life. BUYING something i used to make myself out of scrap lumber when i needed to.
/facepalm

edit:
Damn i miss my old job. Life was good working out of a carpenter shop.

[Penguin]

Ducimus, you could always check out your nearest carpenter to get locally made stuff.

I try to buy stuff made locally, as I don't want to support the transportion madness going on in Europe. Not always easy, especially since most non-fresh food products are not required to be tagged with the country where they are made.
Two small examples:
A simple jar of yoghurt contains 1000s of kilometers of transport. The fruits, the milk, the container, the aluminium lid, they are all produced in different countries. Each of it gets transported all around Europe, put together somewhere, untill they finally land in a supermarket here.
As I am often at the coast, another example: the shrips who are fished at the Northern Sea are flown to Marocco to get shelled there, flown back to Germany, then sold at the local markets as fresh North Sea crabs...

I am cool with buying a japanese car, since they have simular enviromental and work laws as we have and the people who produce it get a decent pay.

[krashkart]

Originally Posted by Ducimus

I think he was making that part up, just to get my goat. I very much doubt anyone would take the time to rank something that can be made out of scrap lumber.

Ah, rgr that.

[Platapus]

Originally Posted by August

But this will blow your mind. The wood for those shims and the rest of that stuff probably came from the US. They buy our raw lumber, build crap with it then sell it back to us.

I wonder if the shims are American but the Home Depot Label was made in China?

[krashkart]

Originally Posted by Platapus

I wonder if the shims are American but the Home Depot Label was made in China?

This is my theory:

The shims begin as thin slabs of wood, which are made here in the US. Those thin little slabs are then shipped over to China to be tapered down and packaged, then shipped back to the US for sale as a Chinese product.

All I can say about Shims nowdays is this:

We go through shims like most people go through butt wipe.
We found more then one reason to just make our own shims.

1.
The store bought shims are never thin enuff at the end!
We build to tight specs and not haveing the right shim handy costs time and money.

2.
The store bought shims love to split all to hell!
We demand our shims to stay in something close to a single piece.
Hell! I'd be happy with a semi-split Shim!
Something that drops out of the damned frame in a jigsaw like puzzle when a nail or screw is waved at them from across the room is
just not meeting our standards!

3.
To try to compete with the China Shimdrome?
Even the ones made in the U.S.of A. exhibit a 'vacuum' symptom.
They suck!

4.
Any S.O.B. that would outsource f'ing Shims to China?!!
That's one S.O.B. that should be nailed up useing those same shims to hold his Nasty Parts off the wall!
We'll not give him a dime of our hard earned money!

[Onkel Neal]

Originally Posted by em2nought

Went to Thailand in December, and guess what - stuff was made in Thailand. They are just a little ways from China and they make their own stuff. Somebody has committed treason against the US, several somebodies. It should be viewed as treason.

Them somebodies is us. We consumers look for the lowest price commodoties. We producers will not compete with coutries who make better products, and we laborers want to earn more (and enjoy a better standard of living) than foreign labor in less developed countries.

[mookiemookie]

Originally Posted by krashkart

This is my theory:

The shims begin as thin slabs of wood, which are made here in the US. Those thin little slabs are then shipped over to China to be tapered down and packaged, then shipped back to the US for sale as a Chinese product.

You are probably right. China's the largest purchaser of U.S. and Canadian lumber in the world. What's that say about the wages of Chinese laborers when it's cheaper for a U.S. company to ship the wood over there, have it turned into shims and then have it shipped back?

Originally Posted by Neal Stevens

Them somebodies is us. We consumers look for the lowest price commodoties. We producers will not compete with coutries who make better products, and we laborers want to earn more (and enjoy a better standard of living) than foreign labor in less developed countries.

[TarJak]

Originally Posted by mookiemookie

You are probably right. China's the largest purchaser of U.S. and Canadian lumber in the world. What's that say about the wages of Chinese laborers when it's cheaper for a U.S. company to ship the wood over there, have it turned into shims and then have it shipped back?

Either Chinese labour is really really cheap or American labour is really really expensive. You work it out.

[mookiemookie]

Originally Posted by TarJak

Either Chinese labour is really really cheap or American labour is really really expensive. You work it out.

I was figuring it was cheap Chinese labor because they could have always sent the lumber to someplace closer with cheap labor like Mexico, Guatemala or the Dominican Republic, but yet they still chose faraway China.