Swarf caps

**Paul Jones** · Oct 12, 2016, 10:50 PM

Jon,

I find the HMT postings with more details on the methods and instructions used to fabricate, machine, weld, cast, etc. the parts that ultimately become the tool just as useful as the final tool. The "look at my stuff" method of posting doesn't catch my interest other than knowing what is possible. I especially like the story behind the story and how the tool idea got started. I see this technique used by Marv and I appreciate the insight.

Jon, I think we all thank you for all you do behind the scenes to make HMT an interesting and useful website.

Thank you,
Paul

**Jon** · Oct 13, 2016, 03:54 PM

Thanks for the thanks guys. We have a popular subject matter in this forum, but what makes it great is that we have a deep bench of heavy hitters. A single high quality poster can make or break an entire forum, and we have many.

Agreed that drafting formal plans is tedious. Authors are making real money from the plans market now, so their work is paying off. Looks like we'll have multiple guys making over $100 in profit from their plans sales just for this month. I'm looking into seeing if we can have our members partner with professional plans drafters, and split the earnings from the plans sales.

I don't yet know how we can best correlate interest in plans with actual revenue from plans. Nobody has ever made an online marketplace for selling tool plans, so we are learning as we go. We just put up nhengineer's Rotary Phase Converter plans for sale. All of the listings we had on the site for all rotary phase converters collectively received minimal "Want plans" clicks. However, 20 of the Rotary Phase Converter plans have already sold in the first week. Clicks and bots aside, that sales figure is real credible data indicating true desire.

There are plenty of forums that I visit, but do not post on. I think the estimates claiming that 80-90% of forum visitors don't post are probably accurate. We've been running site surveys to try to figure out what that silent majority wants, and it looks like detailed tool plans is high on their list, and they're happy to pay for them.

Good to hear more interest in GIFs. I've been posting one per day in the Tool Talk forum. While they seem gimmicky, they're genuinely useful for DIY instruction on the internet. Right now we see this most often in the recipe GIFs that are popular (like these churro ice cream bowls or steak with garlic butter). For specific tasks like that, it may be a superior instructional method than a photo article or a video. The same concept can be applied to DIY builds.