Packing

[Chuck]

This is an offshoot thread from the "Ebay"
thread. It has been mentioned that providing sellers
with detailed packing instructions is a must. However
I have found that a good share of the time they'll
ignore it.

Steve M. who makes the beautiful glass horns says
he'd rather loose a sale than loose a horn due to
insufficient packing.

That is exactly my policy when I ship out my brown
wax blanks. I have found that using USPS priority mail
flat rate medium and large boxes works by far the best
of any shipping option.

I make cardboard dividers to fit into those boxes
which form a series of rectangular compartments
for the cylinders. Each cylinder is boxed in its
own cylindrical record box that has a soft fleece
liner and a lid and usually at least one foam disc
inside to prevent any "end-to-end" motion during
shipping.

These boxed cylinders with rubber band around outside
to hold the lid on, are then put down into the
divider compartments.

The whole box has at least 2 extra squares of cardboard
added to the top and the bottom from the inside
and also at least one extra layer around the vertical
sides, sometimes two extra thicknesses. The result is
it's at least double boxed and often they go out
with three layers all around.

Right now, as of 2/7/15, the shipping cost
for these boxes is $12.65 for the medium size and
$17.90 for the large size.

Orders of 1 to 6 blanks fit into the medium size box
and orders of 7 to 12 blanks fit into the large box.

People often have questioned this shipping
policy of mine and ask for cheaper shipping such
as media rate or some other.

I always tell everyone, if you want your blanks
to come through undamaged, the flat-rate boxes are
the best bet. Anything else is taking your chances.

My observation from all of the reports I've gotten
back from customers is that USPS handles the
priority mail packages with a lot more care than
than first class or media rate.

Chuck http://www.richardslaboratories.com