Ian,
The arrow heads from this thread will not be for sale. The delay has given myself and my peers some serious down time, of which most have put to good use refining their parts. There are a select few who have taken the opportunity to mass produce their parts in order to sell them down the road. To be honest I am fairly angry and disappointed with this course of action. The course is fully funded by the university and the fund donated to the foundry program itself. In fact this course is the most expensive course to run per student offered by the university. These funds are not self replenishing and most of the expenditure is in raw materials, be that wax rubber ceramics metal or electricity. The amount of these materials that my enterprising peers are consuming strikes me as selfish and quite frankly greedy. I feel that this is a unique opportunity that we have been given and the fact of the matter is that those peers that wish to profit have given nothing back to the program. In short, I have an ethical objection to profiting from this course.
That being said, I am willing to do two things for anyone interested. If the run turns out well, I will be willing to send off three heads to a few people to test for the cost of postage. The number of people will depend on the number available. I plan to keep at least six for myself and three to be finished mounted and returned to the foundry for display as a small token of gratitude. All I expect in return is a general review. Let me know what you guys think of the part quality, feel, and performance as I do not have near enough experience to judge for myself. Hell, if you wanted to pass them around, the more the merrier.
The second part. If interest is high enough I will discuss with the powers that be doing a few runs to be sold. I will try to negotiate it to be a cost of materials, plus a % to be given to the foundry as a donation. As I would perform the bulk of the work, there will not be a labor cost associated with it. My thoughts are that anyone interested may purchase the amount of heads they want, and pay for their portion of the costs. Then if you wish to sell some of your's you may add your profit and sell as you wish. I will look into casting near net for those batches so that finishing will be minimized. It may also be possible to cast those runs in a stainless steel rather than brass. That being said, it all rides on approval from the foundry and I can not make any real promises.
My hope is that as long as both sides profit for the better it may be possible to establish a healthy business relationship that could last well after I graduate. The thought of selling has cross my mind, and as you can see I've invested some thought into it. The bottom line is unless the foundry program benefits from it I will not sell anything. I hope you can all understand where I am coming from.
Adam
